Professur Nachhaltiges Bauen / Sustainable Construction

The Swiss Platform Circular Hub just published a report on the Journal of Cleaner Production paper «Calculation and evaluation of circularity indicators for the built environment using the case studies of UMAR and Madaster» by Felix Heisel and Sabine Rau-Oberhuber. Read the German summary here.

Isopp, Anne and Felix Heisel (2019). Ein Gespräch über das Wieder- und Weiterverwenden von Baustoffen, in: zuschnitt 19(75): 16–19.

Heisel, Felix and Sabine Rau-Oberhuber (2019). Calculation and Evaluation of Circularity Indicators for the Built Environment Using the Case Studies of UMAR and Madaster, in Journal of Cleaner Production 243 (SI Urban Mining): 118482. DOI:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118482

Increasingly scarce resources and the resulting desire to turn away from today’s throw-away mentality result in the construction industry increasingly having to think about multiple use and recycling of materials as well as alternative construction methods. But what does recycling mean for the construction industry? The seminar “Bauen in der Kreislaufwirtschaft” on September 29th at the Empa NEST in Dübendorf will discuss how cycles in construction can be closed, which concepts already exist and where new solutions can be found. Felix Heisel and Sandra Böhm will provide insights into current research at KIT Karlsruhe and the construction of the Urban Mining and Recycling unit.

More information and the registration can be found here.

Heisel, Felix and Dirk E. Hebel (2019). Pioneering Construction Materials through Prototypological Research, Biomimetics4(3): 56.

Urbanmining.at reports on our work in a detailed report describing the Mehr.WERT.Pavilion at the BUGA 2019: The ‘Mehr.Wert.Pavillon’ is situated in middle of the Federal Garden Show at Heilbronn, Germany. What makes it so special is that it is made purely from waste materials. The pavilion proves, that already today circular design can facilitate the transformation from waste to resource in the building industry. Consequently, at the end of the exhibition, the pavilion will be taken apart and its parts and materials will be either reused or recycled.

The full article (in German) can be found here.
For more information on the pavilion please click here.

Braun, Zooey (2019). Bild des Monats, Badische Neueste Nachrichten: 16, 04.06.2019

Eberhard, Simon (2019). Mit Weniger Mehr Bauen, Haustech 32 (Mit weniger mehr bauen): 8–13.

Fülmbüro Stuttgart made a movie about the process and motivation leading up to the creation of Mehr.WERT.Pavillon. Please enjoy!

Vortrag JAN GLASMEIER – Simple.Architecture, Bangkok
Donnerstag 23.05.19, 15 Uhr, 20.40 Raum 136 Fakultätszimmer

In a grand opening ceremony today, the Federal Garden Show BUGA 2019 in Heilbronn opened its doors to the public in the presence of German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier and state premier Winfried Kretschmann. Located at the center, the Mehr.WERT.Pavillon now houses and represents for the next 6 months an exhibition on resource use and re-use, focusing on Baden-Württemberg and the built environment. The pavilion was designed by KIT students and staff of the professorships Sustainable Construction, Structural Design and Building Technologies, and realised in cooperation with the office 2hs Architekten und Ingenieur PartGmbB.

For more information on the pavilion, please click here.
For information on the program and exhibition, please click here.
For the press kit, please click here.

Construction of the ‘Mehr.WERT.Pavillon’ has started in Heilbronn. The project is a collaboration of several students and experts of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT and started out as a student design studio called Building from Waste. Stay tuned for exciting updates and save-the-date: Opening of the Federal Garden Show 2019 is on April 17th. More information here.

One year after the operational start, Smiling Gecko celebrated the official opening of the Smiling Gecko School together with guests from sponsors, business and administration, and of course the students and their parents. The Village School started operation in November 2017. In the first year, 136 children attended the school. Since November 2018, 252 pupils and students, aged 3 to 9, already benefit from the ideal learning environment and from a modern bilingual school system. Of these children, 124 attend nursery school (nursery, preschool, kindergarten) and 128 first and second grade in primary school. The SGC HISF Education Campus has been realized and is operated with the generous support of Hartmut & Ilse Schneider Foundation and Prof. Dr. med. Franz Waldeck-Stiftung.

Schlesier, Karsten, Felix Heisel, Dirk E. Hebel, Juney Lee, Matthias Rippmann, Tomas Mendez Echenagucia, Andrew Liew, Noelle Paulson, Tom van Mele, Philippe Block, Nazanin Saeidi and Alireza Javadian (2019). MycoTree: Beyond Mining – Urban Growth In: pasajes arquitectura 148 (diseno e innocacion): 148–9.

Heisel, Felix, and Dirk E. Hebel (2019) Prototypological Research: Pioneering Construction Materials. In Future Cities Laboratory: Indicia 02, edited by Stephen Cairns and Devisari Tunas, 200–207. Singapore, Singapore: Lars Müller Publishers.

Future economic and ecological development is strongly connected to the question where our resources for future prosperity come from. As our mines run dry and CO₂levels are reaching alarming levels, we need to think radically different in all economic sectors. The building industry alone is responsible for 40% of our solid waste production, for 40% of the use of primary energy resources and for 40% of CO₂emissions world-wide. We need to change.

Our natural resources are extracted from the earth and then – in a linear process – disposed of. They are literally consumed rather than being temporarily borrowed from natural or socio-technical circuits. This approach has profound consequences for our planet. Ecosystems are destroyed, the climate is jeopardized, and many resources – such as sand, gravel, copper and zinc will soon no longer be available in economically reasonable terms. Humankind is putting at risk the wellbeing of future generations. If we want our environment to be truly sustainable, we need to stop exploiting and polluting our planet as well as destroying our ecosystem by treating it as a waste disposal site. On the contrary, the built environment could be considered as a depository and future provider of resources, a new mine: the Urban Mine.

Considering the human-made environment as a temporary state within an endless circuit of resources constitutes a radical paradigm shift for the building sector. We urgently need new principles for the construction, disassembly, and constant transformation of the built environment. At the same time, the question must be answered of how to produce new materials without further destruction of our ecosystems. Humankind must manage the shift towards activating the already existing materials in our Urban Mine and bind these mineral and metallic resources through cultivating, breeding, raising, farming, or growing of new substances replacing binders which are non-recycable as well as based on extracted and finite raw materials (such as cement). 

The potential of the existing Urban Mine as a material depot is gigantic. The challenge is to find new technologies to turn those materials in a new generation of sustainable, non-harmful, non-toxic and endlessly recyclable and de-constructable building materials. We also need to find new ways od creating material passports and connect them to a digital cadastral system, so future generations know where which materials will be available in which quantity and where.

The Professorship of Sustainable Construction at KIT is conducting research in the field of circular construction and was able to build several demonstrator buildings applying new findings, methods and principles of construction in order to achieve this goal.

Recent Publications:

One working day, two cranes and a well attuned team: on 21 November 2017, the woodworkers from the Austrian company Kaufmann Zimmerei und Tischlerei placed the seven prefabricated modules of the Urban Mining and Recycling unit with utmost precision between the projecting platforms of NEST, the research and innovation building of Empa and Eawag in Dübendorf. The interior finishing was implemented in the following few days; and the apartment thus ready to accommodate its first two tenants. Read more here.

The 2019 German Federal Garden Show (BUGA) in Heilbronn is both garden and city exhibition. The newly built city quarter Neckarbodenis intends to be a test bed for a new urban area that exemplifies how people live well together in a densely populated urban setting. In this context, the relevance of the question of resources that will still be available and sustainably used in the future cannot be overestimated.

Situated on a central lot of the BUGA terrain, the Mehr.WERT.Garten (translation: Added.VALUE.Garden) and its pavilion address the question how we can perform a paradigm shift in the way we use our resources, from the currently dominant linear economy (take, make, throw) towards a circular economy of closed and pure material cycles. The Mehr.WERT.Pavilion is the shell, as well as main element of an exhibition on local and global resource use, alternative materials as well as their applications in a circular design and construction. On the one hand, the pavilion makes use of the existing urban mine – all materials used in the project have already undergone at least one life cycle, either in the same or in a different form. On the other hand, it acts as a material depot, which will become available again for future constructions at the end of the exhibition. As such, materials utilised in the construction of the Mehr.WERT.Pavillon are specified and employed in a way that allows their complete re-introduction into pure and type-sorted material cycles for reuse, recycling or bio-degradation after the decommissioning and deconstruction of the building. The pavilion’s objective is to proof that it is possible already today to design, detail and construct according to the principles of the circular economy.

The pavilions building materials are separated into four groups: (1) the load-bearing structure is largely made from reused steel originating from a disused coal-fired power plant in north-western Germany. It consists of four inclined supports that fan out like trees and are connected to each other by a rigid steel frame structure. (2) The façades and roof are clad in panels manufactured from recycled bottles glass and industrial glass waste. (3) The furniture is built from recycled HDPE plastic waste, while the chairs are 3D printed from plastic household waste. (4) The floor of the pavilion as well as the landscape design of the garden forms an assemblage of various reused and recycled materials and products made from mineral construction and demolition waste.

Mehr.WERT.Pavillon serves as a laboratory and test run for future construction projects as well as their building processes. The aim is to discuss important issues of construction and the associated use of resources with decision-makers from politics, construction planning and implementation and to develop new innovative concepts, applications and methods, both in practice and in teaching. The pavilion design originated in the design studio Building from Waste of the Professorship of Sustainable Construction at KIT Karlsruhe. It was further developed by KIT students Lisa Krämer, Simon Sommer, Philipp Staab, Sophie Welter, and Katna Wiese in collaboration with the Professorships Tragkonstruktionen (Prof. Matthias Pfeifer / Certification engineer) and Bautechnologie (Prof. Rosemarie Wagner / Structural form finding), as well as the office 2hs Architekten und Ingenieur PartGmbB. 

Project credits

Client:
Entsorgungsbetriebe der Stadt Heilbronn
Ministerium für Umwelt, Klima und Energiewirtschaft Baden-Württemberg
Bundesgartenschau Heilbronn 2019 GmbH

Pavillon:
Design: Lisa Krämer, Simon Sommer, Philipp Staab, Sophie Welter, Katna Wiese, Professorship of Sustainable Construction, KIT Karlsruhe
Planning, structural design and execution: 2hs Architekten und Ingenieur PartGmbB Hebel Heisel Schlesier with Lisa Krämer and Simon Sommer
Structural form finding: Prof. Rosemarie Wagner, Fachgebiet Bautechnologie, KIT Karlsruhe
Certification engineer: Prof. Matthias Pfeifer, Karlsruhe, Germany
Object construction: AMF Theaterbauten GmbH
Electrical and lighting design: Udo Rehm / FC-Planung GmbH
Lightning protection: Gebr. A. & F. Hinderthür GmbH
Electrical installation: Elektro-Scheu GmbH
Furniture construction: Kaufmann Zimmerei und Tischlerei GmbH
Visualizations: Manuel Rausch
Video Documentation: Fülmbüro – Videoproduktion Stuttgart

Garden and exhibition:
Landscape architecture: Frank Roser Landschaftsarchitekten PartGmbB
Landscaping: GrünRaum GmbH
Exhibition design: Idee-n, Büro für nachhaltige Kommunikation
Exhibition construction: ING.Büro Wegweiser
Recycling workshop: Kunststoffschmiede / Konglomerat e.V.
E-waste art: Prof. Abraham David Christian, Vito Pace, Fakultät Gestaltung, Hochschule Pforzheim

Project partner:
AMF Theaterbauten GmbH, Deutsche Foamglas GmbH, Glas Trösch GmbH, Hagedorn GmbH, Handy-Aktion Baden-Württemberg, Heinrich Feeß GmbH & Co. KG, Institut für Umwelt- und Zukunftsforschung – Sternwarte Bochum, Magna Naturstein GmbH, Really ApS, Schröder Bauzentrum GmbH / DeFries, Smile Plastics, SPITZER-Rohstoffhandelsgesell. mbH Selb, StoneCycling BV, Studio Dirk Vander Kooij

Main sponsors:
GreenCycle GmbH
DSD – Duales System Holding GmbH & Co. KG
SER Sanierung im Erd- und Rückbau GMBH

We are excited to announce the arrival of our newest book publication. Today, Addis Ababa: A Manifesto on African Progress by Dirk E. Hebel, Felix Heisel, Marta H. Wisniewska and Sophie Nash was published by Ruby Press.

This publication is centred around twelve manifesto points towards a people-centred urbanism and an architecture of belonging in times of rapid global urbanisation. Based on the authors’ eleven year research experience, the book draws conclusions from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, as its case study. It contains essays on the historic development and the current housing situation of the city by local experts and numerous project examples. Adressing policy makers, architects and urban planners alike, the manifesto gives a series of clues and guidelines for a sustainable urbanisation of contemporary African metropolis.

244 p, ills colour & bw, 19 x 26 cm, pb, English – Available here.

take. build. repeat. Symposium für ressourcengerechtes Bauen.
09.11.2018 / 9:30 – 18:00 Uhr

Fachgebiet Nachhaltiges Bauen
KIT Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
Egon-Eiermann-Saal, Englerstr. 7, Geb. 20.40

The symposium take.build.repeat. questions the currently practiced throw-away mentality of today’s construction industry: Resources are taken, consumed and subsequently disposed of. Contrary to this linear concept of ressource destruction are ideas of closed material cycles, of newly conceived (re-)building technologies and, in particular, new business models of the circular economy. The symposium addresses the important question of how we can build our cities of the future in times of ever-growing global population and increasing resource scarcity without continuing to exploit and pollute our natural environment. The built environment must represent both a responsible present-day solution as well as the material bank for the future.

The one-day symposium will bring together representatives of science and industry, theoretical and practical approaches as well as practitioners and students to jointly shape the future of building through lectures and discussions. Speaking will be Prof. Dr. Werner Sobek (Werner Sobek Group / University Stuttgart), Prof. Dr. Walter R. Stahel (Product Life Institute), Prof. Annette Hillebrandt (University of Wuppertal), Peter van Assche (Bureau SLA), Jasper Brommet (StoneCycling), Stefan Rohrmus (Schüco) and Sabine Oberhuber-Rau (Madaster). The recently opened Urban Mining and Recycling unit (UMAR) at the Empa NEST in Switzerland by Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel will be presented in detail.

The event on 09. November 2018 is organized by Sustainable Construction at the Faculty of Architecture of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT and is recognized as Weiterbildungsmaßnahme by the Chamber of Architects Baden-Württemberg with 4 hours.

Registrations at http://www.arch.kit.edu/aktuelles/take_build_repeat.php

More information at www.nest-umar.net

In the winter semester 2018/19, Sustainable Construction offers a bachelor and a master design studio, a seminar as well as a Stegreif. For more details please refer to the respective posters or detailed information in the navigation on the left.

We wish all students a successful beginning of the new semester!

In the Winter Semester 2018/19, the KIT Faculty of Architecture will offer a lecture series on Sustainable Construction, organized by the chair of Sustainable Construction, Dirk E. Hebel. In total 14 lectures will address the history, state of the art, and alternative futures within the theme. Speakers are: Michael Dax, Felix Heisel, Dörte Meinerling, Daniel Fuhrhop, Roland Hischier, Prof. Andreas Wagner, Prof. Matthias Pfeifer, Prof. Petra v. Both, Prof. Markus Neppl, Jan Wurm, and Prof. Dirk E. Hebel. Please refer to the poster for actual dates. The lecture is held every Wednesday, 09:45 am in Lecture Hall 9 (HS09) at KIT Campus South, Building 20.40.

Poster Design: Uta Bogenrieder

In the Winter Semester 2018/19, the KIT Faculty of Architecture will offer a lecture series on Materials, organized by the chair of Sustainable Construction, Dirk E. Hebel. In total 13 lectures will address conventional and alternative building materials and their use in construction. Speakers are: Sandra Böhm, Waltraud Vogler, Peter Schöffel, and Prof. Dirk E. Hebel. Please refer to the poster for actual dates. The lecture is held every Friday, 09:45am in Lecture Hall Egon-Eiermann at KIT Campus South, Building 20.40.

Poster Design: Uta Bogenrieder

In his capacity as 2018 Harvard GSD Guest Lecturer, Felix Heisel is presenting a lecture titled ‘Resource-Adequate Construction’ on 26th September 2018 at Gund Hall, Cambridge, USA within the reCyclo Design Studio by Visiting Associate Professor in Architecture Caroline O’Donnell. For more information please click here.

On October 16th 2018, Prof. Dirk E. Hebel is speaking at the Detail Kongress 2018 »No Waste! Ressource Bau« about the NEST Unit Urban Mining and Recycling by Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel. Located at the Oktagon of Zeche Zollverein in Essen, the congress brings together partitioners, researchers and positions aiming to promote a more respectful resource and energy use in the built environment. 

Registration at detail.de/detailkongress

Our 2017 MycoTree for the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism is nominated for the Beazley Design of the Year 2018 Award. #BeazleyDesignsoftheYear

MycoTree is a spatial branching structure made out of load-bearing mycelium components. Its geometry was designed using 3D graphic statics, keeping the weak material in compression only. Its complex nodes were grown in digitally fabricated moulds.

Utilising only mycelium and bamboo, the structure represents a provocative vision of how we may move beyond the mining of our construction materials from the earth’s crust to their cultivation and urban growth; how achieving stability through geometry rather than through material strength opens up the possibility of using weaker materials structurally and safely; and, ultimately, how regenerative resources in combination with informed structural design have the potential to propose an alternative to established, structural materials for a more sustainable building industry.

MycoTree is the result of a collaboration between Sustainable Construction at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Block Research Group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich and the Alternative Construction Materials Unit of the Future Cities Laboratory Singapore. It was the centrepiece of the “Beyond Mining – Urban Growth” exhibition at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017 in Seoul, Korea curated by Hyungmin Pai and Alejandro Zaera-Polo, and was on display in Pavilion i7 at the Donuimun Museum Village from September 1st 2017 to March 31st 2018.

Geipel, Kaye (2018). Ohne verbindliche Recyclingquote geht es nicht, Bauwelt 14.2018(Recycelt): 24–31.

On 3rd Juli, Dirk E. Hebel will be speaking at the SFB1244 lecture series “Adaptivität als Utopie” at Stuttgart University. Titled “Material Architektur”, the lecture will start at 7pm at the ILEK, Pfaffenwaldring 14. For more information, please click here.

On 03. Juli, Felix Heisel is speaking at the Re-Cycle, Re-Use conference in Cologne about “innovative building concepts for the 21st century”. The full program and a link for registration can be found here.

Hebel, Dirk E., Felix Heisel and Alireza Javadian (2017). Green Steel, in Constellation.s: Inhabiting the World, arc en reve d’architecture, Michel Lussault, Francine Fort, Michel Jacques, Fabienne Brugere, and Guillaume le Blanc, 162–167. Bordeaux, France: ACTES SUD.

Heisel, Felix and Raphael Disler (2018). Addis Ababa, in The Potato Plan Collection: 40 Cities through the Lens of Patrick Abercrombie, 22–25. London, UK: nai010 publishers.

German television SWR and ARD reported on this semester´s design studio “Tabakschuppen Hayna” of the Professorship of Sustainable Construction in a clip screened on 27.04.2018. “Im südpfälzischen Hayna stehen viele historische Tabakschuppen leer und verfallen. Was könnte Kreatives daraus entstehen? Dem Projekt haben sich jetzt Architekturstudenten angenommen.”

Watch the full report in German here.

Wubshet, Berhanu and Felix Heisel (2018). Landownership and the Leasehold System in Ethiopia: The Formal-Informal Dialogue  in Landholding and Urban Development, COLLAGE – Zeitschrift für Planung, Umwelt und Städtebau 02/18: 21–25.

The April edition of Swiss magazine COLLAGE is featuring excerpts of Lessons of Informality: Architecture and Urban Planning for Emerging Territories – Concepts from Ethiopia (Felix Heisel and Bisrat Kifle, Birkhäuser, 2016).

We are pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition MaterialArchitektur in the foyer of the KIT Library at Campus Süd on 12th April 2018 at 3:30pm.

The KIT Library, the Library of Architecture, the Materials Library of Architecture and the Department of Sustainable Construction have jointly conceived an exhibition that is intended to raise awareness of the topic of materials in architecture. A selection of relevant publications from the last 167 years is shown. Selected material samples represent the subject matter of the books.

In addition to the treatment of established building materials, this exhibition also deals with the search for alternative building materials. There are books presented that show solutions and provide an overview of the current state of research.

Prof. Dirk E. Hebel will speak a few introductory words at the opening of the exhibition.
If the weather is fine, we offer a refreshment outside after the opening (in the rondel between the KIT library and the canteen).

On February 8th at Empa in Dübendorf, Switzerland, the “Urban Mining & Recycling” residential unit (UMAR) was inaugurated inside NEST. Designed by Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel, the unit aims “to advance the construction industry’s transition to a recycling economy.”
Read the full article here.

From 21.02.2018 until 08.03.2018, students of the KIT faculty of architecture can participate in a Stegreif to develop a new signalling system for the coming federal graden show Heilbronn 2019. For more information, please click here.

Prof. Dr. Werner Sobek, Government councillor of the Canton of Zurich Markus Kägi, NEST Innovation Manager Enrico Marchesi, Prof. Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel (Photo Empa)

On February 8th 2018, Werner Sobek, Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel officially opened Urban Mining and Recycling UMAR, the newest addition to the Empa NEST. 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 material laboratory and a temporary material storage.

Felix Heisel, Empa CEO Prof. Dr. Gian-Luca Bona and Prof. Dirk E. Hebel (Photo Empa)

Visitors were very interested in the materials used in UMAR, in this case the mycelium wall insulation MycoFoam (Photo Empa)