Our campus is becoming more beautiful, lively, and inviting!
With “Glow up our campus!”, the University of Stuttgart brings together creative ideas from students and employees to make campus life more attractive for everyone. When the initiative launched in 2025, more than 80 ideas were submitted to the jury. The initiative will continue in 2026, offering another opportunity to share your own ideas and play an active role in shaping the campus.
The following projects are being funded and implemented:
- Campus Beach Festival
- On June 5 and 6, 2025, Campus Beach at the University of Stuttgart became a summer festival stage during the Campus Beach Festival! Ten bands rocked the stage over two days with rock, pop, indie, rap, and more. The AK Cräsch from the University of Stuttgart provided great lighting and sound. The sandy beach was perfect for chilling out, singing, dancing, and walking barefoot.
- Creating a meeting area
- A concrete canoe built for the Concrete Canoe Regatta is being given a new purpose. As mobile seating, it will become part of a specially designed parklet. The project team is developing an eye-catching urban hangout with built-in seating and a planted concrete canoe.
- Game Night
- On October 31, 2025, the first board game and pen & paper convention will launch on Campus Vaihingen under the motto “Revitalize instead of repair.” It kicks off at 4 p.m. and runs all the way until 2 a.m.
- Graffiti
- The Vaihingen campus is being enhanced with two works of art: Artist Jack Lack is decorating the library’s facade and the former bank container (“Mediaspace”) with large-scale graffiti art. The new facade designs add colorful accents and lend the campus areas a special artistic atmosphere.
- Oktopussi
- The “Spider” seating area, which stood in the city garden until the early 2000s, is to be given a new lease of life. In cooperation with Faculty 1, new seating with multiple levels is being planned and implemented.
- Outdoor study spaces
- New study spaces will be created to offer students on both the City Center and Vaihingen campuses space for concentrated work and exchange.
- RadLader
- The RadLader project involves the development and construction of a solar-powered charging station for e-bikes at two locations on Cmapus Vaihingen. What makes this project special is that the materials used are components recovered from the campus, thus creating a circular construction industry.
- Sports box and table tennis tables
- At the initiative of the University Sports, a table tennis table will be installed at the sports facilities at Keltenschanze on the Vaihingen Campus. In addition, a digitally accessible sports box will be set up there, allowing students to borrow and use a variety of sports equipment flexibly via an app. At the initiative of students, two table tennis tables will also be installed at the City Center Campus. This will create additional opportunities for spontaneous physical activity and recreational sports at both campus locations. The project is funded by stuwe e.V.
- Study spaces in the Audimax foyer
- New study spaces are being set up in the foyer of the Audimax (Pfaffenwaldring 53). These will be visually and acoustically separated by partitions. This design creates a pleasant learning atmosphere and can be used by individuals as well as for group work.
- Stuttgart Crowns: Revitalizing Campus Space
- As part of the student initiative “Stuttgart Crowns,” three pavilion-style installations were built using basic wooden slats. The project repurposes a former parking area on campus, turning it into an inviting open-air gathering spot.
- Stuttgart umbrella
- A sculptural umbrella structure is being created using innovative materials, designed for versatile, all-purpose use. The umbrella, which symbolizes the University of Stuttgart's forward-looking approach, will be located on Campus City Center.
- Summer oasis
- The courtyard of Café Faust at Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 24c has been upgraded with seating, greenery, and lighting, inviting visitors to spend time outdoors.
- The Interactive Rotunda
- The rotunda at the Center for Bioprocess Engineering will become a place that promotes creativity, communication, and networking. A lounge area, a digital information board, and a science-themed mural enhance the rotunda, creating an inviting meeting space for students, researchers, and faculty.
- The Wandering Society
- Three events during the summer term: “Flowers in Bloom” in May focused on sustainability and nature. “Airplane Mode”, an afternoon together without phones in sight, was about mental health. The final event "The picnic" celebrated international backgrounds with participants sharing snacks and drawing postcards featuring elements from their home countries.
Our campus is a vibrant hub of creativity and collaboration. The university community is shaping a space where we feel at home and are free to cultivate ideas, and learn together.
Prof. Peter Middendorf, Rector at the University of Stuttgart
Questions and answers
Projects will be implemented in close coordination with the Glow up our campus team. The team will support project leads with planning and implementation, as well as with any necessary coordination with the relevant university departments. At the same time, project leads are expected to keep the Glow-up team informed about all key steps and developments throughout the project.
The projects will also be promoted through the university’s social media channels. A media kit will be provided and must be used for social media posts and any print materials created by the project leads. This helps ensure a consistent visual identity and overall presentation for the project.
Please get in touch with us! We are happy to advise you and help connect you with potential supervisors. Following a consultation, we can also discuss whether you can be given some additional time to find a supervisor. Please note, however, that this does not mean an extension of the overall application deadline.
A supervisor is required to support the successful implementation of the project, receive and administer the funding within their university department or institution. This also makes it possible, for example, to employ student assistants (HiWis) as part of the project.
The supervisor must be employed by the university for the duration of the project. Student assistants (HiWis) are excluded from taking on this role.
Absolutely! Please feel free to get in touch with us. We are happy to support you with your application and financial planning.
You can try to get others excited about your idea and find team members who would like to join you in implementing it. Please note, however, that this competition is explicitly aimed at individuals or teams who want to implement their own ideas and have sufficient time and capacity to do so.
Please get in touch with us! We will do our best to help you connect with other students and potential team members.
If your project meets the criteria of the call for proposals, does not primarily constitute a renovation or refurbishment project, and interferes as little as possible with existing building regulations, we encourage you to submit an application. The relevant university departments are involved in the Glow up our campus initiative from the outset.
For projects requiring technical, legal, or infrastructural coordination, the relevant expertise will be brought in through a central project group to provide support. If your project requires such coordination, this support should be requested at an early stage after the application has been approved.
When planning a campus design project, please keep the following requirements in mind:
- Tree root zones must remain free from construction and paving.
- Fire access routes and electrical installations must remain accessible at all times.
- Any structures or installations must meet applicable safety requirements and be designed to minimize the risk of injury.
- The risk of vandalism should be considered when selecting materials and designing structures and installations.
- Some buildings on campus are protected heritage sites and are subject to specific requirements.
There are no formal restrictions on the number of ideas you can submit. However, experience shows that implementing even a single project can be a significant commitment in terms of time and effort. You are welcome to submit multiple applications. If you do so, however, please clearly indicate in each application that only one of the submitted projects (A, B, or C) can ultimately be implemented.
Please submit a separate application for each independent project idea.
Combining projects that pursue similar goals or are based on closely related ideas can be a sensible option, provided that the total funding requested for the combined project does not exceed the €20,000 funding limit for campus design projects (€5,000 for community formats).
If projects complement or build upon one another, a modular approach with separate applications is also possible. In this case, an application may refer to the other project. However, both projects must be independently implementable in the event that only one of the applications is approved.
We plan to notify applicants approximately three to four weeks after the application deadline whether their project has been selected to participate in the pitch.
The first preparations should begin immediately after the funding decision is announced. Early planning and coordination are particularly important for projects involving campus design, as coordination with the relevant university departments can take some time. The aim is to implement the selected projects over the course of 2027.
Carolin Birk
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Tel.: +49 711 685 81184
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