The Schinkel Progressive Residency was founded in 2003 and presently functions under the auspices of Zentralbuero's project laboratory.

Under the banner of what's next?, the international and interdisciplinary laboratory of the Schinkel Progressive Residency Program appeals, above all, to young architects, artists, designers, curators, (and in some cases also economists). It offers the opportunity for participants to look into and beyond the mediums and thematic positions of their work for a period of up to 3 months.
Curatorially the program takes up questions of the urban, of space, of the architectonic, of the image, of surfaces, of virtual and physical materiality, of new technologies and mediums, of serial products, as well as artist self-promotion.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel and today

Karl Friederich Schinkel (1781-1841) is the most important and well known German architect of the 19th century. His work shaped an entire epoch and has an essential influence through the work of Mies Van der Rohe up to our everday contemporary urban and architectural environments. Schinkel embodies in his work the close connection between architecture and sculpture, science, theoretical teachings and praxis. His works are the result of constant attention to formal concerns and the search for the new and perfection to the point of frustrating even his clients. This obsessive, provocative, and progressive nature, the interdisciplenary dimension of his work and the effects of these that impact today, offer an ideal, but thematically undogmatic background to the program. The relationship to Schinkel in the context of the residency is not intended simply as an historical tribute to this figure, rather it focuses on his methods and process, his work, and his self understanding as architect and artist in the actual cultural and economic context of cultural production.