SOFT - School of Transformation - is a self-organized initiative of students and people working in the architecture field in Munich. SOFT discusses space through discrimination-sensitive, intersectional-feminist, anti-classist, decolonial, and anti-racist lenses. SOFT’s goal is to evoke and foreground power-critical alternatives in teaching, workplaces, and self-organization. SOFT was created by merging the Chair of Unlearning with the Chair of Gossip, both initiatives at TUM.
Chair of Unlearning is a student-led chair at TUM, proposed by Elena Spatz, Marie Gnesda and Lisa André in their bachelor thesis. They held their first student-led seminar "Empowering student positions. What could teaching for all look like?" in the winter semester 22/23 and will present the results in their final exhibition "Architecture discriminates" at TUM.
Chair of Gossip is a parallel initiative, responsible for the publication of a regular newsletter on intersectional feminism, art and architecture, as well as workshops and the 'Code of Studio'. This document is an open dialogue paper to communicate the needs of students and demand an improvement of (working) conditions on all hierarchical levels in academia. Since its publication, the 'Code of Studio' has been discussed at departmental level and among students.