Professur Nachhaltiges Bauen / Sustainable Construction

Ettlin, Anna (2016). Dirk E. Hebel: «Architektur ist eine Lebensphilosophie», in: coop Zeitung, 23.05.2015, Zürich, Switzerland

Dirk E. Hebel forscht über Baumaterialien der nächsten Generation. Sind Bambus, Pilze und Müll eine Alternative, wenn Stahl und Beton knapp werden? Er beschäftigt sich mit der Stadt der Zukunft, als Assistenzprofessor an der ETH Zürich und am Future Cities Laboratory in Singapur. Bekannt wurde Dirk E. Hebel (45) vor allem durch seine Arbeiten mit ungewöhnlichen Baumaterialien, die demnächst an der Architektur-Biennale in Venedig präsentiert werden. Wir müssen im 21. Jahrhundert zwei grosse Fragen beantworten: die Frage nach der Energie und die Frage nach den Ressourcen. In den letzten 150 Jahren haben wir uns angewöhnt, Materialien aus der Erdkruste zu entnehmen, zu brauchen und dann wegzuwerfen. Schon nach dieser relativ kurzen Zeit stossen wir damit an die Grenzen des Möglichen. Sand, der wichtigste Zuschlagstoff des Betons, wird zum Beispiel zunehmend knapp. Allein Marokko hat in den letzten Jahren 50 Prozent seiner Strände verloren. So geht es nicht mehr. Wir müssen Ansätze entwickeln, wie und mit welchen Materialien wir in Zukunft bauen wollen.

Read full article here.

The Global Arts Affairs Foundation (GAA), in collaboration with PLANE—SITE, is releasing a series of video interviews with architects to be shown as part of the TIME SPACE EXISTENCE Exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. Dirk Hebel (Switzerland) advocates for architectural research and sustainable building materials.

The videos, each approximately five minutes, mix theoretical and philosophical concerns with personal trajectories of the architects, yielding discussions on where architecture has been and where it is going. According to the organizers, the interviews as a whole “[are meant to] offer a discursive response to Alejandro Aravena’s theme for the 2016 Architecture Biennale, Reporting from the Front.”

The project will be on view at the Palazzo Bembo and Palazzo Mora from May 28, 2016 through November 27, 2016. The interviews which have been released thus-far are available for viewing here and on the PLANE—SITE’s Vimeo channel.

Read more here.

“We define our profession as architects as a combination between design and research,” says Dirk Hebel of ETH Zürich, a university specializing in engineering, science, technology and mathematics in the heart of Switzerland. The architect was interviewed by architectural movie makers PLANE–SITE as part of the “Time Space Existence” collateral exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia 2016, opening up a fascinating debate over the presumed permanence of architecture and challenging all our preconceptions about the life-cycle of buildings.

Read more here.

The Assistant Professorship Dirk E. Hebel is exhibiting a view into the laboratory entitled “Daring Growth” at this year’s Venice Biennale. As part of the official collateral event TIME-SPACE-EXISTENCE, curated by the Global Art Affairs (GAA) Foundation at the Palazzo Mora, the exhibition will report from the front of research on the potential of cultivated materials for the building industry. Everyone is welcome to join the opening party on 26th and 27th May, 6 to 10pm at the Palazzo Mora.

The first installment in an interview series that explores the philosophical concerns of architects exhibiting at “TIME – SPACE – EXISTENCE,” a collateral event at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, features Dirk Hebel of ETH Zürich.

World-Architects first became aware of the materials research that Hebel and his ETH colleagues having been undertaking when we visited a pavilion he designed for the IDEAS CITY Festival in New York City last year. Made from shredded beverage cartons pressed into wallboards, the striking pavilion featured arched structures resting on wood pallets. That project is visible in this four-minute interview with Hebel, who discusses the broader goals of his research, including the need to grow and cultivate materials rather than mining them. More information here.

Selected exhibition pieces of the architektur0.15 Werkschau are on display at the Bauarena Volketswil from November 2015 until 15th January 2016, including the New York Waste Vault by the Assistant Professorship Dirk E. Hebel and the Block Research Group. A public tour will be held on December 8th at 6:30 pm where the project authors will be present and explain their designs to interested visitors.

For further information, please visit www.bauarena.ch

The Assistant Professorship of Architecture and Construction Dirk E. Hebel and the Block Research Group Prof. Philippe Block are exhibiting the New York Waste Material Pavilion which was designed for the 2015 IDEAS CITY FESTIVAL in NYC at the architektur_0.15 exhibition in Zürich from 31. October to 03. November.

From the curator:
“Are Swiss architects only capable of designing boring buildings?” asked Felix E. Müller, editor-in-chief of the NZZ AM SONNTAG newspaper in his lead article, and went on: “The building boom is plowing up our towns. Unfortunately, the new buildings all look the same. There is no spark of originality, sensuality or experimentation.” Is that really true? We don’t think so. And so in 2014 we staged our third “architektur” exhibition in the 3,500m² Maag EventHall in Zürich, in part to prove that Felix E. Müller really had got it wrong.

The aim of the “architektur” exhibition is to provide a representative image of the many different facets of Swiss national architectural work. The “architektur” exhibition offers the largest platform for networking and exchange between architects, customers, suppliers and the general public.”

Detailed information here or on Facebook.

In April 2015 swissnex San Francisco together with Chair of Architecture and Construction at ETH Zurich organized a one week event called ‘Building From Waste’. During this time everyone interested in the issues of rethinking the use of waste could participate in a series of presentations, a panel discussion, a hands-on workshop and an exhibition.

Marta H. Wisniewska and Felix Heisel will be leading several events from 21st – 25th of April at Swissnex San Fransisco in order to promote the recent publication “Building from Waste” in the United States. For detailed information on the events please see here and register your attendance through the swissnex website:

21.04.2015  – 6:30 pm: Lecture Series “Waste Not”
with Philip Ross, Thom Faulders, Marta H. Wisniewska and Felix Heisel

21.04. – 25.04.2015: “Building from Waste” Exhibit with 25 construction products made from refuse

25.04.2015 – 9:00 am: Constructing Waste: Upcycling and Rethinking Trash
Workshop with Marta H. Wisniewska and Felix Heisel

Ethiopian Guest Critics Yonas Ayalew, Mathewos Asfaw and Bisrat Kifle

Defense Site Model (Group Project)

Neighborhood Plan (Wöhner/Höing)

Semi-Private Spaces (Sari/Berger)

Urban Density (Sari/Berger)

Courtyard Visualization (Disler/Rolvering)

Model Shot Semi-Private Spaces (Disler, Rolvering)

Axonometric View (Tran/Stadelmann)

Prefabricated ceiling elements (Leder/Joller)

Prefabricated ceiling casts (Bachmann/Zürcher)

Material studies in the first weeks of the semester

Material combinations (Tran/Stadelmann)

In the fall 2014, the design studio of the Assistant Professorship of Architecture and Construction Dirk E. Hebel focused on the development of 5.000 social housing units in Ethiopia`s capital Addis Ababa. The professorship partnered up with the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC), which was commissioned by the Addis Ababa City Administration with this task. Units for no- and low-income families, which are being displaced due to on-going redevelopment strategies, shall be constructed within the inner-city context based on the students’ design proposals. The typologies have to take the existing social and cultural conditions into consideration and, where possible, utilize local materials. Additionally, they need to remain within a given budget set by the city administration. Next to important urban questions adressing densities and the construction of neighborhoods, the studio concentrated on locally available construction methods and materials and aimed to develop architecture and construction strategies down to the scale of the detail.

The bamboo composite research collaboration between the Assistant Professorship of Architecture and Construction Dirk E. Hebel in Singapore and the Republic Polytechnic Singapore (Dr Wen Shing) was highlighted again this year from Jan 8^th to Jan 10^th at the Republic Polytechnic Open House 2015 Event.

A selection of twenty alternative construction materials produced from waste will be on display at the Baumuster Centrale Zürich until January 15th 2015, to be experienced hands-on. The material samples are part of the recent publication “Building from Waste – Recovered Materials in Architecture and Construction” by Dirk E. Hebel, Marta H. Wisniewska and Felix Heisel.

The Chair of Architecture and Construction is exhibiting its bamboo composite material in the exhibition “Magie des Einfachen” (The Magic of the Simple) at the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur from 16th November 2014 to 29th March 2015. Featuring the Brazilian Alvaro Abreu and the German Hans Hansen, the exhibition shows a variety of bamboo applications in the fields of art and construction. More information directly from the museum here and below:

Magie des Einfachen
Der Brasilianer Alvaro Abreu schnitzt Löffel aus Bambus, Hunderte, Tausende, seit vielen Jahren. Erst in einer späten Lebensphase hat er damit angefangen. Jeden Tag einen Löffel, immer aus einem einzigen Stück Bambus, keiner ist wie der andere. Der renommierte deutsche Fotograf Hans Hansen hat sich in seiner fotografischen Arbeit eingehend mit dem Werk von Alvaro Abreu beschäftigt und hat unzählige Bambuslöffel sortiert, geordnet und in einen Rhythmus gebracht, mal in strenger Balance, dann wieder in chaotischer Zufälligkeit. Das Gewerbemuseum Winterthur holt Alvaro Abreus Reich der Bambuslöffel gemeinsam mit den fotografischen Arbeiten von Hans Hansen als Schweizer Premiere nach Winterthur.

In collaboration with Haute Innovation, the Chair of Architecture and Construction exhibited its bamboo composite material at two recent international material fairs: from 21st to 23rd October at the Orgatec 2014 in Cologne, Germany as part of the Smart Office Materials exhibition, and between 11th and 14th November at the Subcontractor 2014 in Jönköping, Sweden.

The Assistant Professorship of Dirk E. Hebel exhibits it`s research at architektur 0.14 in Zürich under the theme “More innovation, please!”.  For more information please visit: www.architektur-schweiz.ch

Building from Waste has been successfully launched and is now available online and in book stores. Together with the book vernissage, also the exhibition Building from Waste was opened on October 8th 2014 at the Baubibliothek at ETH Hönggerberg.

The research community at FCL shows momentarily an exhibition at the ETH Hauptgebäude to engage in their most recent work and also present a retrospective view over the past four years. The Exhibition – entitled Research, Outcomes, and Prospects – showcases the context, findings, products, and methods of the diverse research projects undertaken in FCL. The Chair of Architecture and Construction (Marta H. Wisniewska, Felix Heisel and Prof. Dirk E. Hebel) has been responsible for the curation and design of the exhibition together with the FCL management and collaborated with Tobias Klauser, who has realized and logistically organized the show over the past weeks and months in Zürich.

Photos by Marta H. Wisniewska

The research community at FCL would like to invite you to an Exhibition and Symposium to engage in their most recent work. The Exhibition and Symposium – entitled Research, Outcomes, and Prospects – will showcase the context, findings, products, and methods of the diverse research projects undertaken in FCL.

The Exhibition and Symposium programme will begin with the Exhibition opening in the ETH Zurich’s Hauptgebaude on the evening of Wednesday 24 September. The Symposium will be held on Thursday 25 September, and will feature short summary presentations of each research project within FCL in the morning session, and a series of thematic discussions on the challenges of contemporary urbanisation, sustainability, and future cities in the afternoon. The thematic discussions will continue on Friday 26 September, and will offer representatives of local agencies, industry partners and peers an opportunity to discuss specific research themes, insights and applications in greater detail.

The Future Cities Laboratory Exhibition ‘Research, Outcomes and Prospects’ is curated by the Assistant Professorship Dirk E. Hebel stay on display until 9th November 2014.
For a detailed program, please visit the FCL Homepage directly.

CoReSing exhibited its Advanced Fibre Composite Materials at this years World Cities Summit in Singapore from June 2nd to 4th at the Swiss Pavilion. The World Cities Summit is a premier event that brings together practitioners and policy makers with leading experts in their field to identify innovative solutions to the most pressing challenges facing cities today. It is an international conference series on public governance and the sustainable development of cities.

Swissnex and the Future Cities Laboratory commissioned the Professorship of Architecture and Construction Dirk E. Hebel of FCL Singapore (CoReSing) to design the Swiss Pavilion at the World Cities Summit 2014. Creaholic, The Water Network and FCL’s Robotic Tiling, 3for2x, MATSim Singapore and BaReCo will be exhibitted in the structure from June 2 – 4 at booth L1-T12.

The unifying theme for WCS 2014, “Liveable and Sustainable – Common Challenges, Shared Solutions” will build on the discussions at WCS Mayors Forum 2013, where cities will look at the state of urban challenges today and identify principles of shared solutions applicable to cities spanning the range of development, socio-economic and political contexts. The theme will unify all elements of the programme and stimulate ideas and discussion towards the objective of finding practical, implementable solutions as an outcome of the summit of leaders.

CoReSing exhibits its BaReCo Bamboo Reinforcement Research at this year’s InnovFest on 14-16 April.

InnovFest convenes leading thought-leaders, groundbreaking companies and emerging technologies to provide a holistic and comprehensive glimpse of the innovation & enterprise landscape in Asia. Focusing on “Asian Innovations Going Global” InnovFest 2014 will showcase cutting-edge research & expertise from regional universities, start-ups and industry players.

The documentary movie series _Spaces by Felix Heisel and Bisrat Kifle is currently being screened at the World Urban Forum, Urban Equity in Development – Cities for Life in Medellin Colombia. The movies can be watched at Booth 82 (Ethiopia) from the 5th – 11th of April.

Alternatively, the movies can also be watched online at http://www.spacesmovie.com.

The Goethe Institute Addis Ababa opened a new exhibition last week featuring several prototypologies from the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC) and the ETH Zurich, Future Cities Laboratory Singapore, Professorship Dirk E. Hebel. Displayed in models, plans and images, SUDU, SICU, SECU and SAMU propose alternatives for the provision of housing in Addis Ababa. The Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (SUDU), proposes a dense, two- or even three-story structure in a row house typology . The idea is to offer inhabitants a possibility to construct their own houses without waiting for government programs or private/public developers. Furthermore, when constructed over a period of time, depending on the financial resources of its residents, smaller units like SUDU activate private capital for the housing sector. The exhibition was organised by Prof. Dirk Donath and Eva Hartmann.

Our mobile bamboo composite exhibition has been presented at the OPEN HOUSE EVENT 2014 of our collaboration partner Republic Polytechnic Singapore (http://www.rp.edu.sg/openhouse2014/). It has successfully attracted a number of visitors and highlighted the potential impact of a bamboo composite material for the development of future cities. This has been an important event to promote our research within the Singaporean and South East Asian community.

The installation ‘Innovative Technologies’ is on display at the ‘Swiss Positions – Swiss Scales’ exhibition at the Korea Foundation Cultural Centre in Seoul, South Korea. The exhibition is held in partnership with the Embassy of Switzerland in the Republic of Korea and Yonsei University in Seoul, and will be on from 7 November 2013 to 20 December 2013.

‘Innovative Technologies’ shows four different innovations in the area of building constructions. The first, titled 342x, questions the fact that traditional air conditioning systems occupy up to 30% of building volumes. Water based systems, replacing air as the means for cooling, can be embedded in the building structure. The second installation explores the possibility of replacing millions of individual air conditioning units with centralized cooling towers, or heatbuses. The increased efficiency reduces electricity consumption and as a result, costs. The third installation demonstrates the possibility to replace expensive, heavy and corrosion-vulnerable steel reinforcements with an alternative, renewable, lighter, and corrosion-free substance derived out of advanced fibre composite materials. The fourth element suggests a complete new way of constructing concrete structures without using formwork and combining the application of reinforcement and concrete molding into one single process. This is achieved by a robotically controlled spatial extrusion method using tensile active material.

CoReSing will be presenting its work on Fiber Composite Reinforcement Materials at the Sunday Showcase at the Marina Bay Sands ArtScience Museum.

Sunday, 10 November 2013
1:00pm – 7:00pm
ArtScience Galleries, ArtScience Museum

The Sunday Showcase aims to present transdisciplinary works and engage in conversations based on the themes of climate change, environmental futures, and contemporary Asian and future cities. The event is part of the 2013 Art/Science Residency Programme, a partnership between ArtScience Museum and National University of Singapore Arts & Creativity Laboratory, Tembusu College and Singapore-ETH Centre’s Future Cities Laboratory.

Bamboo – The New Steel
The tropical belt of our planet contains one of the most neglected building materials in the world: bamboo, which is also one of the fastest growing, affordable and locally available natural resources. Find out about this remarkable plant and how, with the right treatment, it becomes stronger than steel.

CoReSing is exhibiting the research projects SUDU and SECU as a joint effort of the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development and the Bauhaus University Weimar at the AFRITECTURE exhibition of the Architekturmuseum, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany. Additionally, the exhibition features the two movies “Disappearing Spaces” and “Emerging Spaces” from the cinematic research project by Felix Heisel and Bisrat Kifle.

In the accompaning catalogue, Prof. Dirk E. Hebel is featured with three articles (one with Prof. Dirk Donath of Weimar University) explaining the efforts of CoReSing on establishing alternative building materials and construction methods in Africa and how this doing could be reflected in architectural education programs.

Contemporary architectural practice in Africa is witness to many new and innovative approaches in the area of socially committed building: schools, nursery schools, marketplaces, hospitals, cultural centers, sports facilities and assembly halls. It is these public buildings and commonly used spaces in particular where signs of new utility and architectural concepts are made manifest. In many cases, future users are directly involved in the design and building processes. In addition to the use of the latest technology many of the construction projects are being developed with local materials and resume dormant building traditions.

In its exhibition »AFRITECTURE – Building Social Change« the Architekturmuseum der TU München sheds a spotlight on those projects, with a particular emphasis on those that have been initiated by architects and whose conceptualization incorporates global relationships in addition to those of local culture and individual social groups. By taking into account ecological, economic and social aspects several architects have developed sustainable approaches and solutions to some of the continent’s most pressing design challenges. The exhibition comprises twenty-eight projects from ten countries within Subsaharan Africa, including Kenya, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and South Africa. All projects have been developed since the turn of the millenium and have been planned by African as well as European and North American architects.

Five researchers from the Future Cities Laboratory will be giving a series of lectures and workshops in Seoul, Korea. Yonsei Symposium kicks off with FCL’s Programme Leader Prof Kees Christiaanse delivering a lecture on Open City, followed by a panel discussion with Prof Hong-Chul Rhim (Yonsei University), Prof Jae-Seung Lee (Hongik University), Prof Klaas Kresse (University of Seoul) on 24 October 2013. On  7 November 2013, FCL’s Prof Dr Gerhard Schmitt will deliver a keynote speech on Information Architecture as part of the Swiss Scales event. Architecture Tomorrow is a joint seminar featuring FCL’s Michael Budig and Marcel Bruelisauer alongside Yonsei University’s Asst Prof Ghang Lee of the Building Informatics Group and Dr Seung-Book Leigh of the Centre for Sustainable Buildings.

The Yonsei Symposium wraps up with a lecture by Prof E. Dirk Hebel of the Assistant Professorship of Architecture and Construction on “Constructing Alternatives”. FCL’s “Innovative Technologies” display will also be shown at the Swiss Scales exhibition starting 6 November at the Korean Foundation Cultural Centre.

FCL Midterm Review Exhibition, CREATE Tower Level 6 and 7, September 2013-December 2013

ADDIS 2050 combines the collective activities and collaborations within FCL and African partners over the last few years in Ethiopia, especially in its capital Addis Ababa. The three tables of the installation demonstrate different tools and methodologies in the engagement of differing scales: UNIT, CITY and NATION. The UNIT table suggests five alternative locally available housing construction materials: soil, waste, straw and bamboo. The CITY table allows a possible insight into the future of Addis Ababa following the thesis of clean energy and information abundance. The publication ‘The School, The Book, The Town’ tells the story of the research engagement with Ethiopia, starting with the founding of a school, setting off a series of investigations assembled in a book, and leading to the construction of a town. The NATION table focuses on future energy concepts for Ethiopia. An interactive map allows visitors to simulate different scenarios on alternative energy production and demonstrates how important the visionary thinking is for the future development of the country.

FCL Midterm Review Exhibition, CREATE Tower Level 6 and 7, September 2013-December 2013

Innovative Technologies shows four different innovations in the area of building constructions. The first, titled 342x, questions the fact that traditional air conditioning systems occupy up to 30% of building volumes. Water based systems, replacing air as the means for cooling, can be embedded in the building structure. The second installation explores the possibility of replacing millions of individual air conditioning units with centralized cooling towers, or heatbuses. The increased efficiency reduces electricity consumption and as a result, costs. The third installation demonstrates the possibility to replace expensive, heavy and corrosion-vulnerable steel reinforcements with an alternative, renewable, lighter, and corrosion-free substance derived out of advanced fibre composite materials. The fourth element suggests a complete new way of constructing concrete structures without using formwork and combining the application of reinforcement and concrete molding into one single process. This is achieved by a robotically controlled spatial extrusion method using tensile active material.

Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel presented the research work on composite fiber materials of CoReSing at the ‘Smart Cities’ Symposium at AEDES East Gallery Berlin on June 8, 2013. The panel ‘Smart Materials and Technologies’ here with Eike Roswag, Thorsten Klooster, Felix Heisel and Dirk E. Hebel moderated by Sascha Peters focused on innovative approaches on how to address local and easy available material resources and activate them in the urban creation process. Most of all, economical as well as ecological chances and possible establishments of local value chains inside developing territories such as South-East Asia were foregrounded and discussed.

The participating students Desirée Amport, Pascal Genhart, Naomi Hanakata, Alireza Javadian, Ervine Lin, Nikolaos Theodoratos, Tobias Wullschleger and the Chair of Architecture and Construction Dirk E. Hebel at FCL Singapore will show the results of the FCL-SEC Seminar CONSTRUCTING WASTE with a vernissage on Friday, November 30 at 5pm at the 6th floor of the CREATE Tower. You are warmly invited to attend the event.

CONSTRUCTING WASTE  interrogated the concept of up-cycling strategies in order to minimize the overall refuse amount in Singapore. The focus on design questions created 7 uniques product designs which have the potential to live a second life cycle in an alternated way. The exhibition showcases the pedagogical concept, the layout of lectures and text seminars as well as the final design products of the students.