Innovation Academy

What We Offer:

Innovation Academy will present you with concrete examples of sustainable development in urban and rural settings.  Seminars, lectures and excursions by our highly qualified lecturers from institutes and companies will give you ideas for your own projects.  You can also structure your own program from our varied fields of subjects.

We will accompany you to city districts that are internationally recognized as exemplary for modern, future-oriented models of city development.  Solar architecture, passive-energy houses, citizens’ participatory groups, building groups, alternative mobility concepts, and family-oriented planning are a few of our innovative projects.  Learn, for example, what the differences are among low, passive, and plus energy houses or what it is that makes the city district “Vauban” so famous.

Let us show you state of the art building restorations and find out what potential savings can be achieved there, i.e., a 19th century hotel, private homes built in the early 20th century, apartment houses from the 1960s and 1970s high rises.  Particularly interesting are measures implemented with no investments and concepts that save energy and all very effective ones at that.

Environmentally friendly mobility is more important than ever .  Come and experience some of the solutions first hand: extended city streetcar lines and bicycle path networks,  expanded pedestrian zones, car-sharing schemes, electric vehicles, and new traffic concepts.  Walk in our pedestrian zones, go on a bicycle tour on our bike path network, take an excursion via streetcar  to reduced traffic areas or to where parking spots have been altogether eliminated, or go for spin in a solarcar!

New methods of producing energy:  Farmers become farmers of energy and produce eco-electricity, even utilizing the warmth of milk fresh from the cow.   Join us for visits to biogas plants, wind energy towers, solar energy installations, and hydropower stations.  Climb to the roof of the local football stadium and see Freiburg’s largest solar installation.  Why is the field’s lawn so green even in winter?

Whether you are a single person, a small team or a large delegation, we will organize your travel  experience once you are here.   Would you like a bus to pick you up from the airport, a van with a driver, or tickets for public transportation?  We’ll take care of it for you!  Choose from numerous lodgings, reasonably priced for a backpacker or suitable for guests who prefer a first class hotel.  For years we have enjoyed excellent cooperation with our partner hotels.  Before your tour begins, you may enjoy an organic breakfast buffet to sustain you through the morning.  Would your delegation like a multi-course menu in a top restaurant or a less pricey meal for a student group?  A typical Black Forest farmer’s supper can be as charming as organic wine tasting with local delicacies from the stone oven.  

Our team of translators interpret into the most common languages and also offer Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.  It is our goal to give you all the information you need to take home and to answer your important questions in your mother tongue on the spot.  We will be glad to organize a program for you full of different events.  From a winter sleigh ride in the Black Forest to organizing theater and concert tickets, we will do our best to make your stay as pleasant and as rich an experience as possible.