On 26 November 2025, representatives from science, business, design and craftsmanship gathered in Hall A of the Faculty of Architecture to celebrate the launch of a forward-looking venue where digital technologies and craftsmanship come together productively.
The CyberCraft Lab sees itself as a research and teaching laboratory where artificial intelligence, augmented reality, robotics and classic craft techniques enter into a creative dialogue. Here, students and researchers are given new opportunities to combine digital and material processes, try out hybrid forms of production and actively shape the digital transformation of building and design cultures.
A highlight of the opening was the keynote lecture by Prof. Dr. Norbert Palz, former president of the Berlin University of the Arts, who shed light on the relationship between analogue and digital knowledge and production processes and showed how this gives rise to new formats of exchange and innovative design practices
A testing ground for analogue and digital worlds
In his welcoming address, Prof. Dr. Oliver Steffens, Vice President for Research and International Affairs at OTH Regensburg, emphasised the strategic importance of the new laboratory:
‘With the CyberCraft Lab, we are creating a place where technologies do not replace people, but rather expand their creativity. This is an experimental field that connects analogue and digital worlds and provides our students with the skills they need to shape a responsibly digitised future.
Prof. Christophe Barlieb, head and co-initiator of the CyberCraft Lab, also emphasised the research approach of the new laboratory in his introduction: ‘At the CyberCraft Lab, we are investigating how the mobile, physical space and the precise, digital space can be interwoven. This opens up completely new ways of making – new materials, new tools and new aesthetics, which we are exploring together with our students.’
Prof. Andreas Emminger, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, praised the opening as a deeply hopeful moment in his welcoming address: a place where people, materials and machines do not compete with each other, but rather enable new forms of creative activity together.
Important interface between university, skilled trades, creative industries and industry
The laboratory, which is the result of several years of development, will form an important interface between university, skilled trades, creative industries and industry in the future. It is part of OTH Regensburg's strategic university development, which strengthens innovation, transdisciplinarity and digitalisation as central cross-cutting themes.
The project, which was initiated in spring 2022 by Prof. Christophe Barlieb and Prof. Dr. Thomas Linner together with other committed colleagues, was significantly funded by the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt) as part of the CyberCraft College, which made the establishment of this future-oriented laboratory possible.
Following the official opening and keynote lecture, a get-together in Hall B provided an opportunity for further discussion before the CyberCraft Lab opened its doors to the public for the first time.
With the launch of the CyberCraft Lab, OTH Regensburg is sending a clear signal for innovative design cultures and strengthening its role as a driving force in the regional and national research landscape.
