BAU Residency: ERBA

March–July 2026

Alto Adige / Südtirol, Italy

Founded by Philipp Kolmann (AT, 1989) and Suzanne Bernhardt (NL, 1988), ERBA is a more-than-human collective that weaves together histories, ecologies, and cuisines to reimagine care through place and ritual. Rooted in the belief that landscapes are living archives, their practice honors plant wisdom, multispecies solidarity, and the subtle rituals that sustain relationships across time. Through projects ranging from the revival of ancestral food-preservation techniques to the cultivation of orchard culture, they create site-specific interventions—shared meals, communal fermentations, woven shelters—that attend to the ecotones between forest and clearing, farm and meadow, past and future.

During their residency ERBA will spend time in the small hamlet Aschbach / Rio Lagundo and will explore the ecotone where forest meets meadow as a threshold for reimagining dwelling through acts of making, eating, and moving together. Inspired by pastoral foods once carried in pockets and by the grazing patterns of animals beneath orchards, they will craft lasting, portable foods and establish temporary dwellings as they traverse the landscape. Drawing on their ongoing research into orchard cultures and ancestral preservation techniques, they aim to understand how food-based practices and embodied forms of dwelling can serve as methods for perceiving and responding to ecological and cultural change in South Tyrol’s transforming pastoral landscape.

Feeding Fields, Moving Meadows
Artist Talk by ERBA
12 March 2026 at 6.30 PM
Faculty of Design and Art, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
South Tyrol, Italy

During the artist talk, ERBA presented their artistic practice and the research project they are currently developing for the BAU Residency 2026 as part of the Pastoral Twilight project. At the center of their inquiry is the exploration of the ecotone where forest meets meadow, understood as an ecological and symbolic threshold from which to reimagine dwelling through making, eating, and moving together. The project interweaves research on ancestral preservation techniques and orchard cultures in order to reflect on the ecological and cultural transformations of South Tyrol’s pastoral landscape.

Photo: Elisa Pezza