It emerged from the “Notfalldigitalisierung” (emergency digitalization) during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, as an attempt to provide digital tools based on free and open-source software as the foundation for digital infrastructure instead of centralized platform economies, specifically addressing the requirements of art and design universities. The basic outlines of that initial endeavor were published as a Concept Paper (DE) and Concept Paper (EN).To facilitate networking among institutions as an extension of physical space, the medienhaus/ team was established. Based on the decentralized, federated Matrix protocol, it enables further public institutions, groups, and associations to create digital environments independent of Big Tech by leveraging existing free and open-source software projects.The “Laboratory for Digital Infrastructure” researches, develops, and evaluates requirements set forth together with various internal university cooperation partners, taking into account the conceptual building blocks for a digital infrastructure in art and design universities. Among the outcomes are the digitally enhanced tour, the communication and collaboration system udk/spaces, and various other digital infrastructures and tools.All results and projects developed are published for free access and use, in accordance with the principle of “public money, public code,” to the best of our knowledge and belief.A more in-depth, differentiated elaboration and transition into practice of this principle, based on the results and experiences of the past years in written form, is currently in development and will be published as open access under the name “open-source·ing a university” at the end of 2024. A current insight into the experiences from the process over the last few years can be found in the form of a commentary, published as open access in the Internet Policy Review: “don’t reinvent the wheel — build new features and push them upstream.”The “Laboratory for Digital Infrastructure” was founded by Robert Schnüll, based on the significant collaboration with Marcel Haupt, Florian Weber, and Andi Rueckel. From 2021 until the end of 2024, it has provided a cross-project and cross-context design space for open digital infrastructure.