Sustainability
Transitions Lab 

UMPRUM

In 2025 we launched an online platform dedicated to a straightforward yet complex question: What is sustainable architecture? The forty-odd texts published on the website attest that this question cannot be answered with a single definition, but rather with a multiplicity of arguments, approaches, and perspectives that reveal the tensions between the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability.

Building on research in the field of sustainability in architecture, SHIFT initiated the production of a short animated documentary The Architecture of Sharing, dedicated to participatory and community housing as one possible response to the current housing crisis.

In collaboration with the SHIFT lab, doctoral student Adam Varga developed modular urban furniture prototypes called Micro-Stations, which translate the invisible dynamics of urban environments into a shared sensory language. The project is grounded in the conviction that urban intelligence need not be communicated solely through numerical and analytical means.

Through doctoral student Veronika Soukupová, SHIFT became involved in a long-term pedagogical and research project of UMPRUM's Fashion and Footwear Design Studio, focused on the issues of textile waste and sustainability in the fashion industry. The project Upcycling Statement: Rethinking Textile Waste was realised in collaboration with Diakonie Broumov – a social cooperative operating a sorting and processing facility for used textiles.

The research and educational project Ignored Technology is a platform for critical reflection on technologies that can be considered long-marginalised, overlooked, or excluded from the dominant discourse and practice of architecture and design. The project challenges the persistent distinction between “technologies” and “crafts”: innovations are typically associated with tools and processes linked to mechanisation and industry, while hand-made or community-oriented modes of making remain outside this frame.