Eric Ellingsen and Christina Werner share the history of spatial experiments in public space conducted by the Institut für Raumexperimente (Institute for Spatial Experiments) before the ‘Life Is Space’ symposium held at Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin in 2011. ‘Life Is Space’ – a successor to the day-long ‘Life in Space’ events held in 2006, 2007, and 2008 – brought scientists, artists, scholars, dancers, theorists, spatial practitioners, and movement experts together with students at the Institut für Raumexperimente and the studio team to share, discuss, present, and experiment. These meetings were only loosely planned in advance and were largely left to intuition and serendipity.