Professur Nachhaltiges Bauen / Sustainable Construction

In December 2016, the planning of the architecture by the team under the direction of Prof. Dirk E. Hebel was completed with a ready-to-go, realizable project. The adaptation to the local regulations and the approval of the project were also finalized in spring 2017. In April 2017, the earthworks started. First of all, the whole school area had to be raised. The construction site is huge and we will be moving 600’000 m3 of soil. The result is a lake of 110,000m3 which will be used for the irrigation of our agricultural projects in the future. Although the rainy season, which had started too early, leads to delays, we are sure to be able to take up the school operation with the kindergarten and the first school year in November17. More information here.

Reimann, Milena (2017). Die Zukunft ist aus Bambus. Rheinische Post: Düsseldorf.

Aus dem holzähnlichen Gras werden immer mehr Produkte gefertigt – vom Fahrrad übers Kleid bis zum Toilettenpapier. Jetzt wollen Forscher sogar moderne Häuser aus dem Werkstoff bauen. … Auch Dirk Hebel ist begeistert von dem Rohstoff. Er ist Architekturprofessor mit dem Schwerpunkt “Nachhaltiges Bauen” am Karlsruher Institut für Technologie. Statt wie bisher Häuser aus Stein und Stahl zu errichten, wollen er und sein Team Gebäude aus gepressten Bambusfasern bauen. More information here.

Magdalena Zabek, wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin des Fachgebiets Nachhaltiges Bauen, veranstaltet in Kooperation mit der Innovationsregion Rheinisches Revier GmbH und der Juniorprofessur Rezykliergerechtes Bauen / RWTH Aachen eine Konferenz zum Thema „Kreislaufgerechtes Bauen“ am 07.07.2017 in Aachen. Es werden Vorträge zu Bewertungsmöglichkeiten von kreislaufgerechten und ressourcenschonenden Bauten stattfinden. Felix Heisel wird seine Erfahrungen mit der Kreislaufwirtschaft in Bauwesen vorstellen. Neben den Vorträgen findet eine Ausstellung zu kreislaufgerechten und umweltschonenden Bauprodukten statt.

Veranstaltungsort:
Ehemaliges Straßenbahndepot
Talstraße 2
52068 Aachen

Nähere Informationen zur Veranstaltung entnehmen Sie bitte dem Programmheft:
http://rheinisches-revier.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/allgemein/170510_Programm_IRR.pdf

Anmeldungen zur Veranstaltung bitte unter folgenden Link:
https://goo.gl/forms/05lm48bWQvolaDzT2

Anmeldeschluss ist der 16.06.2017

Alternativen Konstruieren
Mittwoch 07.06.2017, 19:00 bis 21:00

KIT Karlsruhe / Campus Süd / Englerstrasse 7
Geb. 20.40 / Egon-Eiermann-Hörsaal
76131 Karlsruhe

Hebel, Dirk E., Patrick Chladek, Amelie Fibicher, Philippe Jorisch, Felix Heisel, Sophie Nash, Hans Rufer, Gian Salis, Marta H. Wisniewska (2017). ADDIS 5000, Design Studio Publication Fall 2014, 01/05, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

The Chair of Sustainable Construction of KIT Karlsruhe exhibits outcomes of its newest material research at the Cologne Design Fair 2017 together with Haute Innovation und their contribution Circular Thinking – from Upcycling to Biofabrication.

“Alternative raw materials are increasingly being identified across different manufacturing industries and production systems being optimised with a view to reusing recyclable materials. Ideally, at the end of the product lifecycle, there should be no waste produced, but instead high-quality materials that can be used as a starting point for a new product lifecycle. Recycling becomes upcycling, so waste is not produced at all and resources remain in the cycle. The shift away from “consumption” of a resource to its “use” is of especially high importance to material-intensive industries. New upcycling processes will greatly reduce the use of resources and energy on all levels.

In the congress on “Upcycling and sustainable materials cycles”, these topics will be discussed by Dr Sascha Peters and other experts from the sector, using practical examples for illustration.”

The Urban Mining & Recycling (UMAR) Experimental Unit is the newest unit of the NEST research building on the campus of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) in Dübendorf, Switzerland. The building design created by Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel demonstrates how a responsible approach to dealing with our natural resources can go hand in hand with appealing architectural form. The project is underpinned by the proposition that all the resources required to construct a building must be fully reusable, recyclable or compostable. This places life-cycle thinking at the forefront of the design: Instead of merely using and subsequently disposing of resources, they are borrowed from their technical and biological cycles for a certain amount of time before being put back into circulation once again. Such an approach makes reusing and repurposing materials just as important as recycling and upcycling them (both at a systemic and a molecular/biological level, e.g. via melting or composting). This conceptual emphasis means that UMAR functions simultaneously as a materials laboratory and a temporary material storage.

The following approaches lie at the heart of the design:

• Temporary removal and borrowing instead of permanent acquisition and disposal
• Maximal modularisation and prefabrication
• The potential for all materials and products to be extracted cleanly, separated out and sorted

The building, which is created on the basis of a modular construction concept, is fully prefabricated and tested in the factory. The supporting structure and large parts of the façade consist of untreated wood, a material that can be reused or composted after the building is dismantled. The façade also includes aluminium and copper, two types of metal that can be separated out cleanly, melted down and recycled. The interior of the unit contains an extremely diverse range of serially manufactured building products whose various constituent materials can be separated out and sorted before being introduced back into their respective materials cycles without leaving behind any residue or waste. Among the technologies used here are cultivated mycelium boards, innovative recycled bricks, repurposed insulation materials, leased floor coverings and a multifunctional solar thermal installation.

Visitors can learn about all of the materials and products used in the project at the entrance to the unit and in the dedicated materials library.

The UMAR unit is not just a material storage, but also a public repository of information that is intended to serve as a model example and a source of inspiration for other building projects. UMAR wants to make a contribution to the paradigm shift that is required in the construction industry. The module functions both as a laboratory and a test run for sustainable building projects and the processes associated with them. In collaboration with partners from the worlds of planning, administration and production, the unit’s goal is to examine resource consumption and the key issues in the construction industry and use its insights to develop a range of innovative tools and approaches.

Opening: February 2018

Project Team:

Concept, Design and Project Planning:
Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel, Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, Germany (Project Management, Werner Sobek Office: Bernd Köhler, Frank Heinlein)
Structural Planning and General Contractor:
kaufmann zimmerei und tischlerei gmbh, Reuthe, Austria (Matthias Kaufmann)
HLSKE (Heating, Ventilation, Sanitation, Air-Conditioning & Electrical Systems) and MSR (Measuring & Control Technology):
Amstein-Walthert AG, Zürich, Switzerland (Project Management: Simon Büttgenbach)
Sprinklers:
NBG Ingenieure AG, Bern, Switzerland (Bernhard Zmoos)
JOMOS Feuerschutz AG, Balsthal, Switzerland (Rudolf Jenni)
Fire Safety:
Balzer Ingenieure AG, Chur, Switzerland (Dumeng Wehrli, Christoph Schärer)
Building Physics:
Weber Energie und Bauphysik, Schaffhausen, Switzerland (Moritz Eggen)
Client:
Empa Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland (Enrico F. Marchesi, Reto Fischer)

Hebel, Dirk E., Patrick Chladek, Amelie Fibicher, Philippe Jorisch, Felix Heisel, Sophie Nash, Hans Rufer, Gian Salis, Marta H. Wisniewska (2017). Ressource Schweiz, Design Studio Publication Spring 2015, 02/05, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

Hebel, Dirk E., Patrick Chladek, Amelie Fibicher, Philippe Jorisch, Felix Heisel, Sophie Nash, Hans Rufer, Gian Salis, Marta H. Wisniewska (2017). Village School Project Cambodia, Design Studio Publication Fall 2015, 03/05, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

Hebel, Dirk E., Patrick Chladek, Amelie Fibicher, Philippe Jorisch, Felix Heisel, Sophie Nash, Hans Rufer, Gian Salis, Marta H. Wisniewska (2017). Building for Disassembly, Design Studio Publication Spring 2016, 04/05, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

Building for Disassembly, aims to produce a paradigm shift within the construction industry. Instead of working within a linear system of “produce-use-discard”, students are asked to develop new construction methods and principles which follow the concept of a circular economy. Designing for disassembly is perceived as a proactive solution to both the shortage of resources and the minimization of waste. Cities can therefore be simultaneously consumers and suppliers of resources and use themselves for their own reproduction.

Hebel, Dirk E., Patrick Chladek, Amelie Fibicher, Philippe Jorisch, Felix Heisel, Sophie Nash, Hans Rufer, Gian Salis, Marta H. Wisniewska (2017). Living Lab Zakynthos, Design Studio Publication Fall 2016, 05/05, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

Prof. Dirk E. Hebel hält am 18.05.2017 auf der Designmesse INTERZUM in Köln die Key-Note “Building from Waste”. Außerdem stellt das Fachgebiet neuartige Baumaterialien aus seiner Forschungsarbeit aus.

Mit Blick auf die steigende Weltbevölkerung und eine auf den Ressourcenverbauch ausgelegte Industriekultur des 20. Jahrhunderts wird in der Circular Economy ein Idealbild für ein Wirtschaften mit den vorhandenen Werkstoffen gesehen. Der Strategieansatz verfolgt das Ziel, Stoffströme zu schließen, Materialien nach Möglichkeit in geschlossenen Kreisläufen zirkulieren zu lassen und den Wert von Produkten so lange zu erhalten, wie es wirtschaftlich sinnvoll ist und qualitativ möglich erscheint.

Die INTERZUM-Konferenz “Circular Thinking” wird am 18. Mai 2017 neben der Sonderausstellung zu gleichnamigem Thema die Potenziale des Denkens in geschlossenen Materialkreisläufen für Innovationsmanager, Designer und Architekten aufbereiten und Lösungsansätze vorstellen. Ausgewiesene Spezialisten diskutieren im Kontext von vier thematischen Schwerpunkten die Innovationspotenziale anhand herausragender Entwicklungen der letzten Jahre.

Mikkel Bøgh from Danish architecture team EFFEKT gave a presentation this week as a part of the HS16 Living Lab Zakynthos Lecture Series. In his talk Mikkel covered projects ranging from research and experimental design up to implemented realizations. One of the most recent work, called ReGen Villages, aims to construct a self sustaining community comprised of active houses adressing energy production, water management, and waste-to-resource systems.

EFFEKT received numerous awards and won several Danish and international competitions in the fields of architecture, planning, urban space and landscape projects.

In the third week of the HS16 Living Lab Zakynthos the Chair of Architecture and Construction hosted Dr. Christoph Lüthi from Aquatic Research Eawag. Christoph gave a thorough input on the newest sustainable solutions in the realm of Sanitation, Water and Waste Management for the developed and developing areas.

Every year in September, shortly after the beginning of a new semester, an Annual Exhibition takes place in the main hall of HIL Building at ETH Hönggerberg. The recent one presents the students’ work of the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 semesters at the Department of Architecture. In addition to the students’ work, the three latest publications of the Chair of Architecture and Construction are featured, which include ‘SUDU Research and Manual’ by Dirk E. Hebel, ‘Cities of Change: Addis Ababa’ by Marc Angélil and Dirk E. Hebel, as well as ‘Lessons of Informality’ by Felix Heisel and Bisrat Kifle.

The exhibition will run until the end of October.

The research team of the Professorship of Architecture and Construction Dirk E. Hebel on Alternative Construction Materials at the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore together with Republic Polytechnic won the 2016 JEC Asia Innovation Award for their project “Maximizing Bonding Between Sustainable Bamboo Composite and Concrete”. The project is based on a grant by the Ministry of Education under the Translational R&D and Innovation Fund that the FCL team and Republic Polytechnic won together in March 2015.

The ETH/FCL team started to collaborate with Republic Polytechnic in 2014. As part of the grant the ETH/FCL team will train more than 25 Republic Polytechnic students during their Final Year Projects. Successful students then continue their Industry Immersion Program (IIP) internship with us. To date nine Republic Polytechnic students completed the five months IIP.

The winning project will be featured in the JEC Composites Magazine. JEC hosts the world’s biggest and most famous composite fair and exhibition in Paris every year. The JEC Composites Magazine is read by 550,000 composite industry professionals around the world.

Prof. Dirk E. Hebel and Aurel von Richthofen presented at the first annual FCL conference entitled Future Cities / Challenges in Singapore. Prof. Dirk E. Hebel reported on latest developments in research and first steps of implementation projects and gave an outlook on future vectors of engagement while Aurel von Richthofen presented the Engeneering for Development Summer School held with ETH Global and TU Delft in the Netherlands in July 2016 on the topic of “Sand – an (in)finite resource?”.

More information about the conference can be found here.

Javadian, Alireza, Dirk E. Hebel, Ian F.C. Smith, Mateusz Wielopolski (2016). Bond-behavior study of newly developed bamboo-composite reinforcement in concrete, Elsevier, Volume 122, 30 September 2016, London, Pages 110–117

Bamboo is a rapid growing, affordable and available natural resource in many developing countries. It is potentially superior to timber and to construction steel in terms of its weight to strength ratio. A new technology has been developed in this research to preserve the mechanical properties of bamboo and to enhance physical characteristics through composite action for application in structural concrete. The goal of present work is to investigate the bonding properties of a newly developed bamboo-composite reinforcement in concrete through pull-out testing. Various coatings are applied to determine bonding behavior between concrete and newly developed bamboo-composite reinforcement. The results of this study demonstrate that bamboo-composite reinforcement without coating develops adequate bonding with the concrete matrix. However an epoxy based coating with sand particles could provide extra protection without loss of bond strength.

We are designing a future-oriented, sustainable accommodation complex on the rural west coast of Greece. The ambition of the project is to test how our future lives could be led in a world without consumption and destruction of natural resources.

We develop the project based on your own definition of sustainability. The availability of resources, craftsmanship and talents as well as the climatic, ecological and economic conditions shall be integrated into the design of an innovative architectural project. The issue of contemporary tourism and its accompanying economic model will influence and inform your spatial concept. The scheme should consist of several pavilions, a lobby, administration building, educational facilities, as well as an infrastructural system for deliveries, supplies and sustainable disposal. You will be expected to work across a variety of scales, resolving individual buildings details as well as masterplanning.

We strongly recommend the seminar week “Venice – Reports from the Front” to all interested students offered together with the chair of Philippe Block. The chair offers the integrated discipline Construction within the course. Additionally, the integrated disciplines Architecture and Building Systems is offered under the chair of Arno Schlüter. The course Life Cycle Assessment is also offered in collaboration with Roland Hischier (EMPA).

Die Seminarreise wird von den Professuren Philippe Block und Dirk E. Hebel gemeinsam angeboten und durchgeführt.

Die von Alejandro Aravena kuratierte Biennale 2016 beschreitet neue Wege: Die Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage nach dem Bauen in der Zukunft wird nicht als isoliert architektonische Thema begriffen, sondern und insbesondere auf die gesellschaftliche Relevanz und die Verantwortung der Protagonisten hin untersucht. Im Rahmen der altehrwürdigen Stadt Venedig werden dabei Lösungen diskutiert, die versuchen präzise, lokal, nachhaltig auf bevorstehenden Herausforderungen zu reagieren. Die Ausstellungen versammelt Ansätze, Ideen und gebaute Projekte, die Wege aufzeigen wie weltweit ein Beitrag geleistet werden kann zur Bewältigung zukünftiger Bauaufgaben und sozialer Gerechtigkeit und welche Rolle Architektinnen und Architekten dabei einnehmen können und sollten.

Wir reisen während der Seminarwoche nach Venedig und werden uns intensiv mit ausgewählten Beiträgen zur 15. Architekturbiennale auseinandersetzen. Wir werden dabei die Faszination der Arbeit auf allen Massstabs- und Betrachtungsebenen ergründen und uns von der Weite der gewählten Methoden inspirieren lassen. Darüber hinaus wollen wir die Stadt Venedig – das Destillat jahrhundertelangen Bauens – nicht nur bloss besichtigen, sondern ganz bewusst in Beziehung setzen zu den anstehenden Aufgaben der Architektur. Und uns begeistern lassen von der Schönheit der Lagunenstadt.

Dirk E. Hebel, on the invitation of a+u `Japan Architecture and Urbanism` magazine and the Faculty of Architecture, lectured on June 29th 2016 at the University of Tokyo on his research on Cultivated Building Materials. In particular he introduced the teams research on new bamboo fiber materials, which was featured in the last three consecutive issues of a+u magazine from May to July 2016. Also, an exhibition on Green Steel – Advanced Fiber Composite Materials in Architecture and Construction accompanied his lecture in Tokyo. a+u will also feature the book publication `Building from Waste` (Birkhäuser 2014) in Japanese language later this year.

Hebel, Dirk E., Felix Heisel, Alireza Javadian, Mateusz Wielopolski, Simon Lee, Philipp Müller, Karsten Schlesier (2016). Engineering bamboo – a green alternative under basic research Part 3, in: a+u 550, Feature: Vo Trong Nghia Architects, 2016:07, Japan Architecture and Urbanism, Tokyo, Japan

Essay Series: Engineering bamboo – a green alternative under basic research Part 3, Professorship of Architecture and Construction Dirk E. Hebel: The Advanced Fibre Composite Laboratory in Singapore investigates new methods and procedures to produce a high-strength building material out of natural bamboo fibres. If successful, the research could provide a starting point for the introduction of new and adapted technologies that take a widespread natural resource as their basic premise and give reason for people who live in the tropical belt to foster one of the most common plants in the sub-tropical climate zone.

A team led by five inspirational young women and one young man have taken command to realize a large educational facility in Mea Nork, Cambodia, designed for 1000 students. The architectural project involves the construction of a new school, consisting of 24 classrooms, 15 group study rooms, 3 workshop rooms, an administrative wing, a library, cafeteria, community laundry, community medical clinic, toilets, staff dormitories, an outdoor assembly space, playgrounds and a lake.

The gestation of the project began when the students, Lisa Devenoge, Lorine Grossenbacher, Franziska Matt, Elizabeth Müller, and Alina Wyder met whilst undertaking the ‘Schoolhouse Cambodia’ design studio offered by the Assistant Professorship of Architecture and Construction Dirk E. Hebel under the request of the NGO Smiling Gecko at ETH Zurich. The studio consisted of 34 students who visited Cambodia and worked over the semester in pairs to produce schemes for the then hypothetical architectural project.

The collective efforts of the design studio were so much of a success that the NGO founder, artist, and philanthropist Hannes Schmid was compelled to commit to realizing the project. At the culmination of the semester, the five women agreed to continue the work of the studio as part of an internship programme. They work full time to document the entire construction package and are assisted by a male colleague, Oliver Faber, who helps out one day a week. The process has involved consolidating the strengths of the individual projects proposed during the semester into a singular, unified scheme, able to be realized under the practical constraints of time, budget and resources. To do this they have had to work in a highly collaborative environment and coordinate with consultants in Cambodia.

The team agrees that the greatest sense of achievement has come through the process of establishing themselves up as an independently functioning entity. From practicalities such as setting up their working environment to the systematic particularities such as the delegation of tasks amongst themselves according to perceived individual and collaborative strengths. Their self-motivation and initiative has been rewarded by an autonomous work ethic encouraged by Dirk E. Hebel, who leads the team and the project with his in-depth experience in developing territories. The skills and capabilities the young students have obtained during their internship will be directly applicable to their future lives, no matter what path they choose to take.

The project is due to commence construction in November 2016.

Hebel, Dirk E., Felix Heisel, Alireza Javadian, Mateusz Wielopolski, Simon Lee, Philipp Müller, Karsten Schlesier (2016). Engineering bamboo – a green economic alternative Part 2, in: a+u 549, Feature: RCR Arqitectes, 2016:06, Japan Architecture and Urbanism, Tokyo, Japan

Essay Series: Engineering bamboo – a green technical alternative Part 2, Professorship of Architecture and Construction Dirk E. Hebel: At the Advanced Fibre Composite Laboratory in Singapore, a new mechanical processing for raw bamboo has been developed, which leads to a fibrous material with physical features that are mainly defined by the bamboo species. This material is used as a natural fibre source for the production of a high-tensile fibre reinforced composite material aiming for the construction industry. Thereby, controlling the parameters of the underlying hot press fabrication process turned out to be crucial for a systematic tuning of the tensile capacities of the resulting composite materials.

Paganini, Romano (2016). Forschung: Der Pilz, aus dem die Mauern sind, in: Beobachter 11/, Zürich, Switzerland

An der ETH Zürich erforschen Architekten und Ingenieure das Potenzial von Pilzen. Sie sollen einst Plastik ersetzen. Die Prototypen sehen aus wie hellbraune Backsteine und riechen nach Grosis Estrich. Doch sie könnten das Industriematerial der Zukunft sein. «Es ist ein extrem vielversprechendes Material, dessen Potenzial wir noch gar nicht richtig abschätzen können», sagt ETH-Architekt Felix Heisel schwärmend.

Read full article here.

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.

Himmelreich, Jørg, Elias Baumgarten (2016), Kontextwechsel = Ideentransfer, in: Archithese Bildungslandschaften, Juni-August 2016, Zürich, Switzerland

In seinen Studio für Architektur und Konstruktion an der ETH Zürich möchte Dirk Hebel Studierende für einen verantwortungsvollen Umgang mit gegebenen Ressourcen sensibilisieren und daraus neue Entwurfs- und Konstruktionsprinzipien ableiten, welche den vorgefundenen Kontext mit seinen verfügbaren Materialien, Wissen, klimatischen Bedingungen, sowie kulturellen und sozialen Gefügen respektieren.

Lecture series and workshop at the Institut für Leichtbau, Entwurf und Konstruktion ILEK of Prof. Werner Sobek at the University Stuttgart investigating the theme KONTEXT. Organized and moderated by Irina Auernhammer at May 13th, 2016.

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 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.

Essay Series: Engineering bamboo – a green economic alternative Part 1 Professorship of Architecture and Construction Dirk E. Hebel: Steel-reinforced concrete is the most common building material in the world, and developing countries use close to 90 per cent of the cement and 80 per cent of the steel consumed by the global construction sector. However, very few developing countries have the ability or resources to produce their own steel or cement, forcing them into an exploitative import-relationship with the developed world. Out of 54 African nations, for instance, only two are producing steel. The other 52 countries all compete in the global marketplace for this ever-more-expensive, seemingly irreplaceable material.

Hebel, Dirk (2016). From break to breakthrough – operating in large-scale metabolic systems, in Breakthroughs – Ideas at ETH Zurich that shaped the world, Gerd Folkers, Martin Schmid (Hg.), ETH Zürich, Chronos Publishers, Zürich, Switzerland.

Every day and perhaps even every hour, there’s a scientist somewhere in the world making the next scientific breakthrough. Indeed, scientific development cannot take place in a vacuum; rather it thrives in an environment that offers inspiration and the necessary framework. One such place is ETH Zurich; it has flourished in this role over the course of its more than 150-year history. It is not presumptuous to claim that Peter Baccini in the 1980s and 90s as Head of Research at Eawag in Dübendorf (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology),developed the scientific fundamentals, tools and concepts of a radical paradigm shift in the waste management strategy of Switzerland that came to regard waste as a recurring resource and no longer solely as an undesirable substance to be disposed of. The pioneering innovation of his work was a new Swiss waste management model in 1986, which was not concerned with technical proposals for solutions to existing problems per se, but rather focused on formulating visionary social objectives of how waste can become an important part of the material management in our habitat.

PhD,  NTU Singapore, 2013
Master of Bioengineering, NTU Singapore, 2013

Contact: nazanin.saeidi@kit.edu

Senior researcher and Head of Research at the Chair of Sustainable Construction KIT Karlsruhe and Co-Principal Investigator at the Future Cities Laboratory of Singapore-ETH Centre, 2020 – present / Post-doc researcher at the Alternative Construction Materials Group at FCL Singapore, 2017-2020 / Post-doc researcher at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at National University of Singapore NUS, 2014-2017 / Post-doc research fellow at the Singapore Membrane Technology Center, 2013-2014

Dr. Nazanin Saeidi is currently a senior researcher and Head of Research at the Chair of Sustainable Construction at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT. She is also a Co-Principal Investigator of the Urban-Biocycle Project at the Future Cities Laboratory of Singapore-ETH Centre of Sustainability in Singapore. She is focusing on upcycling plant-based waste products and turning them to ecological products with the aid of fungal mycelia as a natural binder.

In her PhD at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore she worked on “Engineering microbes to sense and eradicate a human pathogen”. Her thesis work was impressive enough to get a publication space under Molecular Systems Biology (MSB) from Nature publishing Group, 2011, it was then featured in more than 70 public and academic media.

In 2013, she was appointed as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Singapore Membrane Technology Centre where she was working on “development of improved strategies to control Biofouling of membranes in water industry”. In 2014, she joined the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at National University of Singapore to persuade a new research experience where she was focusing on “Emerging microbial contaminants of concern in tropical urban catchments” and “The effect of diverse land use on the geospatial distribution of Emerging microbial contaminants of concern in tropical environments”.

During her academic life, she has received several awards and recognition from different conferences. Her recent distinguished success is to be named as one of the 20 emerging innovators in Asia Pacific by MIT Technology Review in 2020 for her work on sustainable construction materials.

Dirk Hebel will be be one of the jurors for the MaterialPREIS 2016. “Ziel des materialPREIS ist es eine öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit zu erlangen, die die Bedeutung von Materialität und deren Einfluss auf die räumliche Gestaltung und somit auf das menschliche Bewusstsein aufzeigt. Ausgezeichnet werden herausragende Materialien, die den definierten Kriterien der jeweiligen Kategorie in hohem Maße entsprechen.” More information here.

The publication Building from Waste (Hebel/Wisniewska/Heisel; Birkhäuser, 2014) will be published by a+u in Japanese. The book provides a conceptual and practical look into materials and products which use waste as a renewable resource for architectural, interior, and industrial design. The inventory ranges from marketed products to advanced research and development, organized along the manufacturing processes: densified, reconfigured, transformed, designed and cultivated materials. ”Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Recover“ is the sustainable guideline that has replaced the ”Take, Make, Waste“ attitude of the industrial age. Based on their background at the ETH Zurich and the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, the authors provide both a conceptual and practical look into materials and products which use waste as a renewable resource. More information here.

Dirk Hebel speaks at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) on April 22, 2016 at the symposium Embodied Energy and Design. The event frames embodied energy—defined as the sum of energy required to produce, transport, assemble, and dispose of any building element—in the context of broader design ecosystems and architectural issues. Organized by David Benjamin, GSAPP. More information here.

The Federal Institute of Material Science and Technology EMPA commissioned the Professorship Dirk E. Hebel and the Werner Sobek Group Stuttgart to build a NEST Unit in Dübendorf with the theme “Urban Mining”. “Resource shortages, greenhouse gas emissions, polluted drinking water and much more are all symptomatic of a throw-away mentality in a society that produces more waste by the day and scatters it in the environment. The Urban Mining unit tackles this mindset head-on and sees waste as a goldmine of new materials.” More information  here.

As of March 2016, a project team of ETH students and architects formed to continue the planning process for the Cambodian Schoolhouse project. After a successful design semester in fall 2015, Smiling Gecko Foundation, the initiator and client of the project, decided to coninue the work with the Professorship of Dirk E. Hebel and support the formation of a planning team. Construction work is scheduled to start in November 2016 in the village of Melanork, two hours north of Phnom Penh.

As a first encounter with the studio theme of `Building for Disassembly`, students took 24 hours to dismantle a car in its 5000 single pieces. While doing so, an investigation started in order to understand which construction and connection principles are adequate for a disassembly approach and could be transferred into an architectural design process. Walter Haase of Werner Sobek`s Insitute of Lightweight Design and Construction ILEK at the University of Stuttgart, gave impressions of their current research approaches in the field and showed the potentials for the building industry. Directly after the dismanteling happened, students started to deepen their knowledge on the found architectural potentials with the first excercise of the semester, this time with a time frame of one week.