Professur Nachhaltiges Bauen / Sustainable Construction

On 22nd April, the Professorship of Sustainable Construction was a guest in Hall B0 at the BAU2023 Munich to organise, in cooperation with the KIT Department of Architecture and the Bund Deutscher Architektinnen und Architekten BDA and supported by Wacker Chemie AG, the Symposium on Sustainable Construction “Does Concrete // in a sustainable world // have a future”.

Invited speakers were Prof. Karen Scrivener, Head of the EPFL Laboratory of Construction Materials as well as Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Dehn, Head of the KIT Institute of Concrete Structures and Building Materials, and Koos Schenk, Director of SmartCrusher BV. The event and the panel discussion were moderated by Dr. Thomas Welter, Federal Manager at Bund Deutscher Architektinnen und Architekten (BDA). Prof. Dirk E. Hebel, KIT Professor of Sustainable Construction and Dean of the KIT Department of Architecture, welcomed the audience to the event.

Many thanks to all the speakers for their great performance, for valuable food for thought and interesting links that were created through the symposium.

Between 60 and 100 participants were present at the Forum in Hall B0 at the BAU2023 trade fair in Munich. The recording of the event will be available here shortly.

We would like to sincerely thank all those involved in the event for their commitment and organisational efforts, for the great encounters, conversations and new connections that were created at and through the symposium. Many thanks especially to the team of BAU2023 trade fair and Hall B0 for their great efforts around all events in the context of BAU.

Thank you!

More information about the event here.

At this year’s BAU World’s Leading Trade Fair for Architecture, Materials, Systems in Munich from April 17 to 22, 2023, the KIT Material Library of the Department of Architecture is presented.

An excerpt from the physical sample stock of the material library is shown. On a small exhibition area, some material samples of different material groups, especially materials from secondary raw materials and biological building materials, will be displayed. In addition, the ideas and goals of the already existing cooperation of the Materialbibliothek Deutscher Hochschulen (MDH) are presented.

We cordially invite you and you to stop by at booth 210.B in hall B0 to see the exhibition.

Click here to see the exhibited materials.

A new digital workshop for the KIT Faculty of Architecture

The Faculty of Architecture at KIT urgently needs a new digital workshop. Funds are being made available by KIT for this purpose in order to go into realisation following the semester.

The semester task is to further design, plan and realise a circular replacement building as a digital experimental workshop between the buildings 11.40 and 20.40. The aim is to build a new digital workshop. At the end of the semester, a first building block is to be presented as a real-built mockup with the help of digital tools.

The aim is to provide students with a creative and functional space for digital mockup construction, offering sufficient space for cutting plotters, laser cutters and 3D printers.

The design will be published by the Sustainable Building Professorship together with the Digital Design and Fabrication (DDF) Professorship and the Design of Structures (dos) Professorship. In addition, a professional planning team consisting of the building owner and specialist planners will support the design with their expertise.

Lecturers:
Prof. Dirk Hebel, Manuel Rausch, Katharina Blümke, Prof. Riccardo La Magna, David Largueche, Prof. Moritz Dörstelmann

First meeting: 20.04.23
Regular date: Thursday, 10:00 a.m., Building 11.40, R 26
Number of participants: 15 + 3 Erasmus (group work)

A Research Seminar of the KIT Material Library

The Materials Library of the Faculty of Architecture at KIT, which is currently being reorganised as part of the “Materialbibliothek Deutscher Hochschulen” cooperation, offers an extensive collection of materials that, in addition to conventional building materials, focuses on building materials made from secondary raw materials, alternative biotic raw materials and recyclable building materials.

As a pioneer of sustainable building, this special group of materials makes it possible for future generations of architects to understand the value of purity, the necessity of using secondary materials and the preservation of value in the case of reuse or recycling.

In the research seminar Future-oriented Building Materials, Master’s students gain a detailed insight into this class of novel, endlessly circulating building materials. The seminar is accompanied by individual supervision, joint discussion rounds on specific topics, input lectures and excursions. However, the focus is on the students’ independent scientific research work, which aims to provide detailed descriptions of the materials. In this context, the students can work on the new KIT material database and enter data directly. In this way, the students are actively involved in building up the database. The seminar will conclude with an exhibition in the materials library. On display will be the data sets created by the students with the corresponding material samples of innovative, sustainable materials for the construction industry.

First Meeting: 25.04.23
Regular date: Tuesday, 10:00 a.m., Building 11.40, R 26
Excursion: 16.05.23 (more planned)
Participants: 12 master students

A round trip among traditional and future building 

In the seminar week we want to take a round trip between traditional and future building methods and explore the connections of hand and material.

We want to look at new manufacturing techniques in craftsmanship and technology, their interdependencies and dare a look into the future of construction towards digital fabrication. The journey will take us from Karlsruhe, via Stuttgart to the alpine foothills and then via Zurich and Laufen back to Baden. 

Some of the costs will have to be covered by the students themselves. We are striving to keep this part as low as possible.

Site:
Karlsruhe, Kernen, Reutlingen, Bregenz, Reuthe, Andelsbuch, Schlins, Lustenau, Winterthur, Dübendorf, Zürich, Laufen, Karlsruhe.

Number of Participants:
20 students, Bachelor / Master

Blümke, Katharina, Elena Boerman, Daniel Lenz, and Riklef Rambow. “Die gebaute Umwelt als Ressource – Mit RoofKIT vom linearen zum zirkulären Verständnis des Bauens.” ASF Journal, March 28, 2023.

Voss, Karsten, and Katharina Simon, editors. Solar Decathlon Europe 21/22: Competition Source Book. 2023.

This question is explored in an episode of “42-Die Antwort auf fast alles” produced by Hessischer Rundfunk.

The director writes: Fungi have hardly been researched. Yet they are among the oldest and most diverse forms of life on our planet. Only through fungi could plants develop ages ago. They are at home everywhere: in the earth, in the air, in our bodies. And they form huge networks. They are intelligent, although they do not have a brain of their own. They make decisions and trade with the plants they live with. They take possession of insect bodies and turn them into zombies. Are fungi the secret rulers of the planet? (text: HR)

In this context, not only Dr. Nazanin Saeidi from the Sustainable Construction professorship is interviewed, but also the biologist Merlin Sheldrake, Francois Buscot from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig and the political scientist Astrid Séville are invited to talk on the program.

The KIT Department of Architecture will be holding a symposium as part of this year’s “BAU2023 – World’s Leading Trade Fair for Architecture, Materials, Systems”, which will take place in Munich from 17 to 22 April. The event will take place on 21 April from 12.00 to 13.30 in Hall B0, a hall with the motto “Investing in the Future”.

In this event, a discourse on the current problems in the use of concrete will be stimulated, the current and future possibilities of recycling old concrete into new concrete will be discussed as well as new application concepts and production formulations for concrete. It will be held in English.

Prof. Karen Scrivener, Head of EPFL Laboratory of Construction Materials, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Dehn, Head of KIT Institute of Concrete Structures and Building Materials and Koos Schenk, founder and director of SmartCrusher BV, are invited as speakers. Prof. Dirk E. Hebel will welcome the audience and introduce the speakers. The panel discussion after the lectures will be moderated by Dr. Thomas Welter, BDA federal manager.

DOES CONCRETE // IN A SUSTAINABLE WORLD // HAVE A FUTURE ? 

WELCOME
Prof. Dirk E. Hebel, KIT Department of Architecture, Professor of Sustainable Construction 

INTRODUCTION THEMES – PROBLEMS, LIMITATIONS, ALTERNATIVES
Prof. Karen Scrivener, EPFL Laboratory of Construction Materials, Head of Laboratory 

NEW CEMENTITIOUS MATERIALS – RESEARCH VS. STANDARDISATION
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Dehn, KIT Institute of Concrete Structures and Building Materials, Head of Institute 

CIRCULAR RESOURCE ECONOMICS – HOW TO CLOSE THE LOOP OF EXISTING STRUCTURES
Koos Schenk, SmartCrusher BV, Director 

DOES CONCRETE // IN A SUSTAINABLE WORLD // HAVE A FUTURE?
Dr. Thomas Welter (BDA), Moderator of Panel Discussion

We are very much looking forward to meeting you there!

The event is organized by the KIT Professorship of Sustainable Construction and kindly supported by Wacker Chemie AG.

Find out more about the symposium on the Symposium Event Page of the KIT Department of Architecture or on the Website of BAU2023 Munich.

Wenk, Holger. “Pilze Als Vielversprechender Baustoff Der Zukunft.” BG Bau Aktuell – Arbeitsschutz Für Unternehmen, vol. 04/22, no. Rohbau, Sept. 2022, pp. 12–13.

165 projects from 54 universities took part in this year’s competitionline CAMPUS Award. The spectrum of topics ranged from utopias for urban development and material studies to adaptive architecture and after-use strategies. The proportion of projects dealing with sustainable design tasks such as the conversion of existing buildings, climate adaptation in cities or research into alternative materials was particularly high.

In addition to two student award-winning projects, which went to the TU Munich and Leibniz Universität Hannover, and two award-winning final theses from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the University of Stuttgart, one faculty project also received an award.

From nine projects submitted, the jury selected the work “NEWood, a 100% bio-based, sustainable and recyclable material alternative to wood-based products” as the winner. The research by the Institute of Design and Construction Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology resulted in the “development of a new class of bio-based, resource-efficient and CO2-negative materials.” As an alternative to particleboard, MDF and OSB, the boards are made exclusively from wood and agricultural waste. Mushroom mycelium is used as a natural binder, so no synthetic binders are required.

The research project shows that NEWood has comparable properties to wood-based materials such as MDF, OSB and particleboard. The use of mycelium, the structural part of fungi, is a novel bonding method that enables the production of a 100% bio-based and fully recyclable alternative to wood-based materials. The project team, consisting of Dr. Alireza Javadian, Dr. Nazanin Saeidi and Prof. Dirk E. Hebel, is convinced that “NEWood” will be a sustainable alternative to conventional MDF and particleboard and has the potential to initiate a paradigm shift in the way we produce our future building materials in terms of the circular economy without leaving any waste behind.

More information here.

The “Architekturpreis Gebäudeintegrierte Solartechnik 2022” awards projects that provide outstanding impetus for the planning and design of building-integrated solar systems and draw attention to exemplary solutions in sophisticated architecture. According to the jury, the award-winning projects show that the integration of photovoltaic modules and solar thermal collectors can succeed with equally high design and technical ambition.

In the RoofKIT project, six high-format standard modules were expanded into photovoltaic-technical hybrid modules. As part of a coherent overall concept, the handling of the PV roof also demonstrates integration into the building design and urban context.

More information here.

This pavilion at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) shows with sustainable construction how learning and lingering on campus can look like. The project emerged from the impromptu of the Professorship of Sustainable Construction “Learn where you want” in the winter semester 2020/21.

With this interdisciplinary pilot project, students have ventured a step into the future of university life together with the Professorships of Sustainable Construction (IEB) and Construction Technology (IEB), the Sustainability Office (SEK), the Technology House (TEC), and the Real Estate Management (IM) of the KIT. The sustainable development of the university campus is focused on increasing the quality of staying and creating informal learning places. The overall motto is the creation of a “marketplace of knowledge”.

Local products, reversible joining methods and elements from the urban mine contribute to circular construction with a mono-material design.

Open to appropriation, the pavilion offers several levels at different heights for sitting, lingering and learning. The structural framework develops windmill-like from a multifunctional core element to the outside and gives the learning place its distinctive identity. The open structure encourages exchange and allows interaction with the surrounding green spaces.

Text and Photography: Dominic Faltien

Jeroch, Theresa. “In Die Pilze Gehen.” Die Architekt, November 2022.

Niederstadt, Jenny. “Wie Wir in Zukunft Bauen.” Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, December 12, 2022. https://www.helmholtz.de/newsroom/artikel/wie-wir-in-zukunft-bauen/.

Sand is one of the most sought-after raw materials in the world. The global demand for sand is gigantic and has tripled in the past 20 years. Sand is in the concrete of booming megacities around the world and is important in coastal protection. How do we have to build so that cities can continue to grow in the future?

This and many other questions are addressed in the current edition of Planet Wissen, “The battle for sand – new ways of dealing with the coveted raw material. In the second half of the episode, Prof. Dirk E. Hebel from KIT is a guest in the studio with the moderator Jo Hiller and reports on recycling-friendly construction, single-variety, degradable construction, and alternative building materials such as bamboo or mycelium.

RoofKIT, Karlsruhe. “Le Projet RoofKIT Comme Démonstrateur de Solutions Pour Aujourd’hui et Demain.” Translated by Régis Bigot. NEOMAG, December 2022.

Niederstadt, Jenny, and Dirk E. Hebel. Bauen wir künftig Häuser aus Pilz? Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, December 12, 2022. https://www.helmholtz.de/newsroom/artikel/bauen-wir-kuenftig-haeuser-aus-pilz/.

Blaue, Carsten. “Wo Pilze Zu Baustoffen Werden.” Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, December 6, 2022, Nr. 282 edition. https://www.rnz.de/region/metropolregion-mannheim_artikel,-karlsruher-kit-wo-pilze-zu-baustoffen-werden-_arid,1015503.html.

In the article “How we build in the future”, the Helmholtz Association presents sustainable, climate-friendly solutions from architecture and construction research. In this context, Prof. Dirk E. Hebel presents the RoofKIT project of the KIT Faculty of Architecture as an innovative lighthouse project for circular justice, purity of types, recycling and reuse, and the resource-friendly handling of materials.

Concrete as a building material is then critically examined. Prof. Frank Dehn, Institute Director at the KIT Civil Engineering Faculty, is researching climate-friendly alternatives and the use of old concrete. In addition, other forward-looking topics such as the “sponge city” and the energy supply of future buildings are highlighted.

Read the full article here.

The new book by Gernot Minke entitled “Building with Bamboo – Design and Technology of a Sustainable Architecture” was recently published by Birkhäuser Verlag. In addition to material information and properties, it also contains application examples from research and practice. In the chapter “Reinforcing with Bamboo”, among other things, research projects of the Sustainable Construction Professorship at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology are presented.

The exhibition Plastic: Remaking Our World, which was initially on show at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, will be on display at the V&A Dundee in Scotland from 29 October 2022 until 5 February 2023.

The exhibition examines the history and the future of this controversial material. From its early origins when it was intended as a sustainable alternative to natural resources, to its meteoric rise in the twentieth century.

More information here.

Baden-Württemberg Stiftung GmbH. “RoofKIT: Preisgekrönte Vision aus Karlsruhe.” PERSPEKTIVEN, October 2022.

RoofKIT, the Karlsruhe winning project of the Solar Decathlon 2021/22 was re-located and re-errected in Karlsruhe on Wednesday 09 November 2022. Under the supervision of the project management, the wooden modules were dismantled in Wuppertal within two days, transported to Karlsruhe and now reassembled by the experienced carpenters of Kaufmann Zimmerei und Tischlerei in cooperation with the KIT Solar Decathlon team.

About the project:
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology participated in the 2021/22 Solar Decathlon Competition in Wuppertal, Germany with its project RoofKIT. Designed as a top-up to an existing structure, it demonstrates a vision for the building industry: social adequate, energy positive and circular sustainable. Since 2020, more than 100 students from KIT within different faculties and under the leadership of the professorships of Sustainable Construction (Prof. Dirk E. Hebel) and Building Technologies (Prof. Andreas Wagner) worked on the project which cumulated in the construction of the House Demonstration Unit in May and June 2022 in Wuppertal, Germany.

For the next three years, the housing unit can be visited on the campus of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Straße am Forum/Richard-Willstädter-Allee). Furthermore, from spring 2023 onwards, research projects subsequent to SDE 21/22 are planned by the Professorship of Building Technology in cooperation with the Professorship of Intelligent Living.

More information about RoofKIT here.

On Monday, 7 November, Dirk E. Hebel was invited to the Bundestag by Kassem Taher Saleh, Member of the German Parliament and Chairman of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Construction and Municipalities, to discuss which recommendations for political action can be derived from Dirk E. Hebel’s research. Mr Saleh, a civil engineer by profession and member of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, was particularly interested in wood as a building material along the entire value chain (raw material availability and end-of-life scenarios) and strategies for a truely circular economy in the building sector.

Justus Hartlieb, “Bauen Verbindet: Internationale Zusammenarbeit an der KIT-Fakultät für Architektur”, LookKITINTERNATIONAL, no. 03/2022 (November 2022).

At the expert discussion on “Innovative and Sustainable Building Materials” of the Green parliamentary group in the state parliament, to which Gudula Achterberg, member of the Heilbronn state parliament and member of the working group and committee on state development and housing, had invited on 21st October, science and practice met and identified future tasks for building and housing.

The speakers from science and research as well as from construction practice were united by the realisation that the current crises and global interdependencies can also accelerate developments in construction.

Keynote speaker Professor Werner Sobek received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in May as a thought leader for the built environment of tomorrow. The multi-award-winning engineer and architect insists on honest balancing when it comes to innovative and sustainable building materials: when it comes to the consumption of resources, be it sand, gravel, fossil fuels or precious metals. One of the other speakers advocated, for example, the introduction of a building type E for “experimental” for lighthouse projects, for which simplified standards apply in order to facilitate innovation. Dr Anne Braune from the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) advocated the use of pure, sustainable building materials and suggested as a parameter for approval: My building should emit a certain amount of CO 2 per square metre per year. She advocated looking “in the package insert” for building materials and for service life-adapted construction.

Dr Nazanin Saeidi, a researcher at the KIT Sustainable Building Professorship, presented an example of innovative building materials. Based on fungi, the award-winning material NeWood is suitable as a substitute for pressboard or for insulation. It is made from 100 per cent organic waste and is recyclable.

The event showed many developments that can and must revolutionise the way we build in the future. Nevertheless, the familiar and the tried and tested can help to overcome upcoming challenges in the construction industry.

The exhibition Plastic: Remaking Our World, which was initially on show at the Vitra Design Museum, will be on display at the V&A Dundee in Scotland from 29 October 2022. The contribution of the Sustainable Building Professorship will also travel from Weil am Rhein to Dundee.

Plastic: Remaking Our World will again feature prototypes, new technologies, and cutting-edge materials as designers grapple with a material that has changed our world. 

The exhibition will feature product design, graphics, architecture and fashion from the collections of the V&A and Vitra Design Museum, as well as collections all over the world. This is the first exhibition produced and curated by V&A Dundee, the Vitra Design Museum and maat, Lisbon, with curators from V&A South Kensington.

Lenz, Daniel, Elena Boerman, and Dirk E. Hebel. 2022. “Gebäudebestand als Ressource.” nbau, no. 03/2022 (Oktober). https://www.nbau.org/2022/10/12/gebaeudebestand-als-ressource/.

Two members of the RoofKIT team, Katharina Knoop and Johannes Hasselmann, had the opportunity to present the RoofKIT project and the Solar Decathlon at the Ingenieurgruppe Bauen (IGB) in Karlsruhe last Thursday.

All the listeners were very interested in the topics the two presented and were particularly impressed by the team spirit and the continuing enthusiasm and motivation. The event was able to show the company new perspectives for everyday work and planning.

In this report, arte investigates the power of mushrooms and visits various actors. A Swiss mushroom expert, for example, wants to restore polluted soils. Researchers are also working together with students on a biological packaging material made from mushrooms. Mushroom leather or stable insulation and building materials are also examined in this episode of Re:.

The reporters also visit the Solar Decathlon in Wuppertal. Prof. Dirk E. Hebel explains why the mushroom, as a biologically renewable raw material, could become an important component of the future sustainable construction industry within planetary boundaries and in line with the European Green Deal.

Published in October 2022, edited by Dirk E. Hebel, Felix Heisel with Ken Webster

Sustainability is to become the guiding principle of social action and economic activity. At the same time, its ways and means are far from clear. As a holistic praxis, sustainability must combine technical and material as well as social, economic, ecological and also ethical strategies, which have multiple complex interactions and all too often also conflicting goals and priorities. In no other field can these be better observed, addressed and influenced than in architecture and building.

Each volume of “Building Better – Less – Different” details two fundamental areas of sustainability and explores their specific dynamics and interactions. After introductory overviews, innovative methods and current developments are described and analysed in in-depth essays, international case studies and pointed commentaries. The sustainability criteria of efficiency (“better’”), sufficiency (“less”‘) and consistency (‘different”) form the framework for each book.

The first volume “CIRCULAR BUILDING AND CIRCULAR ECONOMY” presents concepts, methods and examples of circularity in construction and the economy. Urban mining and circular construction are two approaches to the changes that architecture and urban design are facing, using techniques such as mono-material construction and design for disassembly, and tools such as material passports and databases. The circular economy is not solely about recycling but encompasses a wide range of strategies from local community projects to new ownership and service models and steering mechanisms such as carbon fees and dividends.

More information about the publication on www.degruyter.com.

Hebel, Dirk E., Felix Heisel and Ken Webster, eds. Building Better – Less – Different: Circular Construction and Circular Economy. Building Better Less Different 1. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, 2022.

As part of the 17th “Karlsruher Frischpilzausstellung” of the Natural History Museum in Karlsruhe, the MycoTree was exhibited in the pavilion in the Nymphengarten on the 8th and 9th October. The exhibition displayed 250-300 species of mushrooms and presented various literature on mushrooms. The weekend exhibition was visited by almost 1300 people interested in mushrooms.

The MycoTree, a spatial structure made of the cultivated materials mushroom mycelium and bamboo, supplemented the exhibition with the topic area ‘Building materials from natural resources’. At 2 p.m. on both days, Sandra Böhm and Elena Boerman gave a short lecture on the exhibited project, which was created in 2017 as a cooperation project between the KIT Sustainable Building Professorship and the Block Research Group of ETH Zurich.

The assembled elements of the MycoTree can be disassembled again into their original materials and returned to the natural cycle as nutrients. In this way, it shows how digital design, technology and resource-saving materials could come together in the building industry in the future.

How can we build in an environmentally friendly way and redensify city districts in a sensible way? Süddeutsche Zeitung reports about the winning design of the Solar Decathlon 21/22.

The project was supervised by Prof. Dirk E. Hebel and Prof. Andreas Wagner at KIT.

Mushrooms can be used to grow insulations or renewable “bricks”. This could lead to ecologically clean buildings in the future.

Welt am Sonntag reports about scientists like Prof. Dirk E. Hebel working in laboratories on the possibility of replacing metals or mineral materials with harvested materials like mycelium, the root network of mushrooms.

Klaaßen, Lars. 2022. “Ideen Für Die Zukunft.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 17, 2022.

Grossarth, Jan. 2022. “Ein Baustoff Steht Im Walde.” Welt Am Sonntag, September 11, 2022.

Resource-efficient housing concepts for a growing city

Cities play a crucial role in the struggle for a sustainable and climate-friendly future. This is where housing, production, trade, transport and energy consumption all come together. In addition, our cities are gigantic stores of raw materials. In some areas, the resources tied up in the current building stock have long since exceeded the raw material deposits that can be reached with reasonable effort in the earth’s crust. This urban mine needs to be tapped.

The city of Heidelberg has set itself ambitious sustainability goals and wants to lead the way as a pioneer of the circular economy in urban development and urban planning. To this end, among other things, the project “Circular City – Building Material Cadastre for the City of Heidelberg” was launched, with which the city is relying on the urban mining principle. The building stock is being successively recorded and analyzed so that the data obtained can be made available to planners.

This semester, we will investigate how the application of circular building production and the use of materials from urban mining can succeed architecturally, using different design locations in Heidelberg. 

The design will take place in collaboration with the integrated disciplines of structural engineering (Prof. Riccardo La Magna), FBTA (Prof. Andreas Wagner), and building economics (Hon. Prof. Kai Fischer).

1st meeting: 26.10.22 in the studio
Interim critique: 14./15.12.2022
Table critique: 25./26.01.2023
Submission/Presentation: 23.02.2023

A laboratory for future building

The Faculty of Architecture and the Department IV Natural and Built Environment of KIT have set themselves the goal to become a pioneer of circular and sustainable building in Germany and Europe. This requires a new research, teaching and experimental laboratory for future building, in which research, teaching and practical applications can be interlinked and practiced. 

Topics of sustainable building should not only be researched, but the building should already show and demonstrate them. The laboratory is to become a showcase for research into future building for the entire society and an attractor for the city of Karlsruhe.

The semester task is to develop a construction laboratory located in area 10 on the south campus. An urban planning study is part of the task. A large ground-level hall is required, in which new possibilities for future construction will be researched with the help of digital manufacturing processes and robotics, and experimental buildings will be erected. Above the hall, teaching and learning spaces for students and researchers are to be created with common zones for exchange and networking.  On the roof area, individual research and innovation modules are to be installed according to the “plug-in” principle and can be dismantled again simply and easily. People will live and work in these changing units, so that they serve as busy experimental laboratories and at the same time shape and constantly change the appearance of the building.

Day and time: Thursdays, 9:00
1st meeting: 27.10.2022
Excursion to Zurich on 04.11.2022