Aggressively SOFT
Anthony Butcher
Tina Heusinger
Lucie Kinowski
Marie Leber
Franziska Lichtenberg
Barbara-Rosa Siévi
Elena Spatz
Emerging from a joint collaboration of student collectives at the Technical University of Munich, SOFT – School of Transformation embodies a critical stance toward the institution and its pedagogies, envisioning a juster discipline through parasitic, soft, and joyful interventions. As radical non-experts we learn by doing and active engagement with social issues, questioning hierarchies at every level and challenging the violence of bureaucratic standardization and physical normativity.
From the “Chair of Unlearning”–a self-empowered professorship run by students for all members of the institution–to the “Code of Studio,” a holistic re-examination of teaching methodologies authored by students and staff, we intentionally create spaces of irritation, disturbance, and reflection as practice. The Code of Studio has been adopted by the Fachschaft and has catalyzed the review of department-internal codes across TUM’s Architecture Faculty and the school of engineering and design. In collaboration with the student body representative, we produced an informational brochure for survivors of sexual violence, and our two film series with support from the Bavarian department of culture—Architectural Ego (2024/25) and Haus Haus 2.0 (2025)—probe the narratives that shape our built environment and introduced reflections of architecture inherent biases to a wider public audience. Our Symposium Curriculum Comedy and Out*drawing Architecture convene critical discourse on pedagogy and practice.
As active members of the Trans-institutional Parity Network, we regularly co-host the Parity Jour Fixe series and organize symposia at TUM, while also being invited as guests to events at ETH Zurich, TU Vienna, and TU Berlin, amongst others. In Brussels, we delivered the lecture “Architecture Discriminates” at the New European Bauhaus Conference, forging alliances across Central Europe to blur institutional strictures and planetary divides.
For three years, we have been working as an intersectional-feminist collective at the Technical University of Munich, born from a critical stance toward the institution and the content and methods of its teaching. As a network of students, our practice was parasitic, soft, and joyful: we intervene, observe, connect, and hack. As radical non-experts, we tackle topics that move us and learn in the process. On equal footing, we question hierarchies at every level of society and challenge the violence of bureaucratic world-standardization. Our goal is to blur the existing boundaries of global planning practices and to develop the instruments needed to overcome those boundaries for everyone. In opposition to the narratively beautified world for the few, we stand for honesty and ideological transparency, and call for a living, approachable, and globally inclusive architecture.
Today, as a collective at the heart of society, we find ourselves at a turning point. What began as a student initiative has become an activist alliance of optimistic architects. Yet, contrary to the aspirations of our academic endeavours, we find the world around us growing a little harsher every day. Instead of societal softness, we experience state violence; instead of social fluidity, the compulsion toward right-wing conformity.
Accordingly, we feel compelled to correct our soft course: rather than disillusionment and capitulation, we demand productive aggressiveness—better yet, an aggressive softness—a strategy of resistance that is at once tender and resilient, both militant and compassionate.
For the duration of the fellowship we propose a series of discussion events to envision and concretize a new methodology for addressing the many social issues of today – thematically ranging from anti-facism in practice to activist interventions – that we would like to tie together in the format of a new publication, specifically in the launch of a new magazine.