The webinar 'Innovation, Inspiration and Demonstration of Underground Spaces', as part of the Hagerbach NXT50 celebrations, on 25 September 2020, was attended by 159 participants and 260 registrants. Co-hosted and moderated by ITACUS, we shared the vision of the 'Mission Earth First' initiative in which ITACUS is proudly participating. Other partners of this initiative are Hagerbach Test Gallery, SCAUT, and TheHUS.institute (a radical thinking foundation from Liechtenstein). Future webinars will explain more about the background of this initiative and future plans.

The program of the webinar contained presentations by ETH students of innovative concepts on innovation, inspiration, and demonstration that had been developed during Antonia Cornaro's course at ETH on 'Planning of Underground Spaces' in the spring semester 2020.

Panelists Felix Amberg, Michael Kompatscher, and Rudi Hilti (live on location at Hagerbach) debated on these concepts and on future developments at Hagerbach and took questions from the (virtual) audience.

Testimonials contemplated looking 'beyond the obvious' when considering opportunities in the subsurface.

The attendees were also able to interact with the panelists and moderators by polling on specific questions. See the dedicated landing page for more information on upcoming webinars in this series and to see a recording of this one. The second webinar in the NXT50 series will take place on 11 November 2020.