Professur Nachhaltiges Bauen / Sustainable Construction

The Urban Mining and Recycling unit now has its own website. At www.nest-umar.net you can find all information about Empa NEST, the unit UMAR, as well as the making of the unit. Additionally, the website offers a material library of the materials used including data sheets and company contacts.

Knüsel, Paul (2017). Ein Meister darf Normen brechen, TEC21 51-52(Gebäudetechnik-Kongress: Können Planer alles?): 20–25.

On January 5th, 2018, Swiss Newspaper Neue Züricher Zeitung reports on the successful installation of the NEST Unit Urban Mining and Recycling in Dübendorf. Read the full article here.

In 2017, a number of designers explored the structural properties of new, environmentally friendly materials – but mushroom mycelium was one of the most unusual. It was used to create a tree-shaped self-supporting structure in South Korea.

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 new “Urban Mining & 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 will be implemented in the next weeks. The apartment will be ready in the spring of 2018 and will accommodate two tenants.

The NEST unit “Urban Mining & Recycling” is simultaneously an apartment, a material storage, and a material lab. The unit is based on the idea that all resources required to construct a building must be fully reusable, recyclable or compostable. Werner Sobek, director of the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design of the University of Stuttgart and owner of the Werner Sobek Group, together with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel of the Chair of Sustainable Construction at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), are responsible for the design. The general contractor of the project is Kaufmann Zimmerei und Tischlerei. The seven modules that form the new unit were prefabricated in their factory in the Reuthe, Austria.

The structure as well as large parts of the facade are made of untreated wood. The innovation lies in the connections and the material-oriented use: all connections of the system subjected to tension and compression can be easily undone. Adhesive connections had been omitted in favor of plug and screw connections. The wood being used is applied in such a way that an otherwise standard coating is not necessary, thus making purely type-sorted recycling or purely biological composting possible.

Recycling stones and borrowed floor slabs

The facade consists of aluminum and copper. Both metals can be melted and recycled according to type. Inside, various serially-processed building products had been used, the different materials of which can be recycled in a type-sorted manner and without residue. Among other things, grown wall panels consisting of mushroom-based mycelium, innovative recycling stones, recycled insulation materials, as well as borrowed floor coverings are also being used in the unit. Through the use of such new “material leasing concepts“, the construction of this unit also calls into question the existing economic concepts prevalent in the construction industry. During a second construction phase, the unit will then also address research questions regarding the sustainable use of energy through a retrofittable solar heating system.

The “Urban Mining & Recycling” unit will be connected to the NEST backbone and the interior will be completed in the coming weeks. The official opening of the unit will take place in early February 2018. Shortly thereafter, the first two tenants will move into the new residential unit and subject the materials to a practical test.

The video shows the construction of the first 5 houses of the Cambodia School project within the months of July to October 17. The good progress allows for the first 140 children to start their kindergarden year this November within not only a completely new building, but also a holistic pedagogical concept. Read more here.

Invited by Haute Innovation and Dr. Sascha Peters, KIT’s Sustainable Construction and ETH Zürich’s Block Research Group are exhibiting their recent MycoTree at the ELMIA Subcontractor fair ‘Material Revolution’ from 11. to 14. November in Jönköping, Sweden. 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.

On 01. November, Detail RESEARCH featured MycoTree on their website. The article in German describes the aim of the Chair of Sustainable Construction, as well as the Block Research Group to find ways to extend the palette of building materials beyond the conventional choices towards more sustainable and renewable options. The next print edition of Detail will further discuss the exhibition ‘Beyond Mining – Urban Growth’ at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. You can read the full article here.

On October 13 – 12pm, Felix Heisel holds a public lecture at Milstein Hall as part of his engagement as Hans and Roger Strauch Visiting Critic at Cornell University, USA. The talk – titled “rethinking abundance, resource-adequate building, and the example of UMAR” – follows the conviction that all 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 returned 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). For event details, please click here.

On 6th October, daily newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung published a report on MycoTree in Seoul, as well as the research work of Sustainable Construction of KIT Karlsruhe and the Block Research Group of ETH Zürich. The complete article (in German) can be found here.

Alternative Construction Materials of the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) in Singapore and Sustainable Construction at KIT Karlsruhe have received the 2017 SMART Innovation Centre’s Execution Grant and have been admitted to the Innovation Fellows Program for the project “High-Tensile Organic Fiber Reinforcement for Structural Concrete”. The Fellows Program is aimed to work with Faculty, Post Docs and researchers to prepare them to launch their company. The team was previously awarded the 2012 SMART Innovation Centre’s Innovation Grant for the project “High-Tensile Organic Fiber Reinforcement for Structural Concrete”.

Alternative Construction Materials of the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) in Singapore and Sustainable Construction at KIT Karlsruhe, together with University of Newcastle’ Singapore branch (UoN) have received the 2017 Strategic Pilot Grant from University of Newcastle Australia for the project “Structural Behaviour and Applications of Newly Developed Bamboo Composite”. The aim of this scheme offered by UoN is to provide support for researchers to pursue high impact, strategic and collaborative research activities, specifically for young investigators.

The joint research aims to optimize the FCL’s bamboo composite materials for structural applications in the field of timber construction. Several physical and mechanical properties tests are designed to evaluate the bamboo composite material for applications such as beams, floor slabs and joints. The project will run from October 2017 to March 2018 with a potential to be extended further.

Hebel, Dirk E. (2017). Reservoir Building: Towards an Idea of Abundant Pertinence, in Embodied Energy and Design: Making Architecture Between Metrics and Narratives, ed. David Benjamin, 107–116. New York, N.Y, USA and Zürich, Switzerland: Columbia University GSAPP, Lars Müller Publishers.

Read the full article here.

On September 19th, also Karlsruhe’s newspaper ‘Badische Neueste Nachrichten’ reports on the MycoTree in Korea.

On September 4th, the prefabrication of all 7 modules of NEST unit UMAR has started at the facilities of general contractor kaufmann zimmerei und tischlerei gmbh in Reuthe, Austria. The building, designed by Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel in collaboration with a multitude of academic and industrial partners, aims to prove the feasibility of the circular approach for the building industry. For more information, please click here.

Hebel, Dirk E., Philippe Block, Felix Heisel and Tomas Mendez Echenagucia (2017). Beyond Mining – Urban Growth: The Architectural Innovation of Cultivated Resources through Appropriate Engineering, in IMMINENT COMMONS: THE EXPANDED CITY, 116–127. Seoul, South Korea: Actar Publishers, Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017.

On September 11, Felix Heisel is holding a public lecture at Cornell University APP titled Building from Waste – the Waste Vault as part of his engagement as Hans and Roger Strauch Visiting Critic the coming semester in New York. He is co-teaching the design study Cyclo: Architectures of Waste with Caroline O’Donnell and Dillon Pranger, which looks at “non-cyclables” as potential materials for new form generation. Cyclo will first map currently obscure recycling networks in the United States and globally, documenting where our various recycling-bound materials go to be processed, and searching for materials that are not recycled (whether due to material qualities or due to economic feasibility). Part two will focus on these non-cyclables as physical objects and investigate methods of using these materials legibly, in order to promote environmental awareness and architectural innovation.
For more information please click here.

“While some architects have been experimenting with mushroom mycelium as a cladding material, architect Dirk Hebel and engineer Philippe Block have gone one step further – by using fungi to build self-supporting structures.

Hebel, who leads the Sustainable Construction unit at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and Block, who founded the Block Research Group at ETH Zürich, have created a tree-shaped structure consisting almost entirely of mycelium.

According to the duo, the material – which is formed from the root network of mushrooms – could provide the structure of a two-storey building, if it is designed with the right geometries.”

Read the complete article here.

Opening on 2nd September 2017, the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism is entitles Imminent Commons:

In an age of environmental decay and unprecedented wealth inequality, the cities of the world gather in Seoul to explore the urban parliaments where the politics of resources and technologies is enacted. The Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017 is an experimental platform for an imminent urbanism that goes beyond human-centered function, ownership, and consumption to a commons of resources, technologies, and production.

The cities of the world stand at a crossroads. Amidst radical social, economic, and technological transformations, will the city become a driving force of creativity and sustainability or will it be a mechanism of inequality and environmental decay? Cities are not only the drivers of social change but are now modifying ecosystems, geological structures, and even the climate. For the first time in history, the crucial questions of the city — climate change, biodiversity, air pollution, food security, automation, unemployment and inequality— are driven by concerns beyond human control and threaten the very survival of the planet.

The inaugural Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism proposes nine essential commons as a viable path towards a sustainable and just urbanism. Emerging from both ecological and technological concerns, this framework foregrounds an exploration not of distant utopias but of the very near future. In other words, these emerging commons are already changing the way we live in cities. Whether met with fear or hope, they will very soon change the way we live in the city. The Seoul Biennale provides a platform for an international array of participants – politicians, policy makers, experts, and citizens at large – presenting global research and engaging with local conditions.

Four Ecology Commons: Air, Water, Fire, Earth
Five Technology Commons: Making, Moving, Communicating, Sensing, Recycling

The exhibition Beyond Mining – Urban Growth by the Professorships Dirk E. Hebel and Philippe Block is part of the Common Earth and will be on display in Pavilion i7 at the Donuimun Museum Village from 2nd September to 5th November 2017.

More information can be found here: http://seoulbiennale.org

Hebel, Dirk E., Felix Heisel and Aurel von Richthofen (2017). Alternative Baumaterialien, in BodenSchätzeWerte: Unser Umgang mit Rohstoffen, focusTerra, ed. focusTerra, 214–217. Zürich, Switzerland: vdf Hochschulverlag.

Hebel, Dirk E., Marta H. Wisniewska and Felix Heisel (2017). Building from Waste – the Waste Vault, in IMMINENT COMMONS: Urban Questions for the Near Future, eds. Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Hyungmin Pai, and urbanNext. Seoul, South Korea: Actar Publishers, Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017.

Hebel, Dirk E., Nikita Aigner, Dustin Fleck, Felix Heisel, Alireza Javadian, Simon Lee, Philipp Müller, Aurel von Richthofen, Karsten Schlesier and Marta H. Wisniewska (2017). Shifting Paradigms: From Excavation to Cultivation, in Future Cities Laboratory: Indicia 01, 191–199. Singapore-ETH Centre, Signapore: Lars Müller Publishers.

On 18 July 2017, Süddeutsche Zeitung reports on the resource sand for the building industry, with an interview by Prof. Dirk E. Hebel. “Dirk Hebel von der Universität Karlsruhe zweifelt trotzdem an der Nachhaltigkeit von Wüstensand und seinem Nutzen als alternativem Baustoff. ‘Die Idee klingt erst einmal gut’, sagt er, ‘aber auch Wüstensand ist erschöpflich. Die Wüste hat genauso ein Ökosystem wie Meere oder Flüsse, das dann zerstört wird. So würden wir ein Problem mit einem nächsten ersetzen.'” The full text (in German) can be found here.

The Professorship of Sustainable Construction, as part of the yearly open day of the faculty of architecture at KIT Karlsruhe, is displaying material samples of its current research projects at the material library, Room 141.1. The event takes place on July 19th 2017 in the main building 20.40, from 4pm onwards. For details on the faculty’s program, please click here.

On 07.07.2017, Felix Heisel held a public lecture at the conference “Kreislaufgerechtes Bauen” in Aachen, speaking about the NEST Module UMAR (Urban Mining and Recycling), which is currently under construction in Switzerland. The German magazine Recycling reported on the event with the words: “Felix Heisel vom Fachgebiet Nachhaltiges Bauen des Karlsruher Institut für Technologie forderte Architekten zum Umdenken in der Planung auf. Ein mit dem Architekturbüro Werner Sobek in der Schweiz geplantes Gebäude sei im Bau und zeige neue Möglichkeiten: Alle Bauteile sind hier dekonstruierbar und sortenrein trennbar, um eine Wiederverwendung von Materialien sicher zu stellen. Nur so können Gebäude in der Zukunft als Materiallager dienen.”

Read the complete text (in German) here.

Hebel, Dirk E., Patrick Chladek, Amelie Fibicher, Felix Heisel, Philippe Jorisch, Hans-Christian Rufer and Marta H. Wisniewska (2017). Circular Economy Pedagogical Methods, by Professor Dirk Hebel,: in The Re-Use Atlas: A Designer’s Guide towards a Circular Economy, ed. Duncan Baker-Brown, 110–113. London, UK: RIBA Publishing.

Hebel, Dirk E. and Felix Heisel (2017). Cultivated Building Materials: Industrialized Natural Resources for Architecture and Construction. Birkhäuser: Berlin.

The 21st century will face a radical paradigm change in how we produce construction materials – a shift towards cultivating, breeding, raising, farming, or growing future resources. The book presents innovative cultivated building materials, like cement grown by bacteria or bamboo fibers as reinforcement for concrete. The book aims to build a bridge from scientific research to product development and application.

Left to Right: Xin Ying Chan, Dr. Alireza Javadin, Dr. Nazanin Saeidi ,Fanny Amelie Hirt, Prof. Dirk E. Hebel, Nadine Petsch, Sandra Böhm, Han Jun Yi , Zegeye Cherenet Mamo, Elena Boerman

Hellge, Anna (2017). Wie Sand Am Meer?, in: natur (07/17): 44 – 49.

Nicht nur Wüstensand aus Mauretanien macht beim Bauen oder im Küstenschutz Probleme. Dirk Hebel, Professor für nachhaltiges Bauen an der Uni­versität Karlsruhe, erklärt das Phänomen: ,,Zwar ist Sand genau die Zutat, die der Beton benötigt – aber Sand aus der Wüste eignet sich nicht zur herkömmli­chen Betonproduktion.” Stattdessen sind dafür Sän­de aus Meeren, Seen oder Flüssen nötig. Der Grund dafür liegt im Detail: ,,Sie müssen sich diese Sande nur einmal unter der Lupe anschauen”, sagt Hebel. „Sie werden feststellen, dass die Körner, welche durch Bäche und Flüsse in unsere Meere getragen wurden, scharfkantig und gebrochen sind.” Nur die­se kantigen Körnchen können durch hohe Reibungs­widerstände Druckkräfte aufnehmen und weiterlei­ten und machen -salopp gesagt -Beton überhaupt erst belastbar. In der Wüste schmirgeln sich die Sandkörner dagegen glatt und sind zur Betonherstel­lung so nicht brauchbar. ,,Wüstensand verhält sich wie eine Hand voll Murmeln”, erklärt Hebel.

Master of Architecture, ETH Zurich, 1998
Master of Architecture, Princeton University, 2000

Contact: dirk.hebel@kit.edu

Professor of Sustainable Construction KIT Karlsruhe 2017-present / Dean of the Faculty of Architecture KIT 2019-present / Principal Investigator at FCL Singapore 2012-2020 / Assistant Professor of Architecture and Construction ETH Zurich 2012-2017 / Founding Scientific Director of the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development EiABC 2009-2012 / Visiting Critic Cornell University 2017 / Guest Lecturer Princeton University, USA, 2008 / Guest Professor Syracuse University, USA, 2008 / Visiting Lecturer, American University of Sharjah, UAE, 2005 and 2006

Dirk E. Hebel is Professor of Sustainable Construction and the Dean of the Department of Architecture at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, KIT, Germany. Prior to that, he was Assistant Professor of Architecture and Construction at ETH Zürich, Switzerland and a Principal Investigator at the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore. He was also the Founding Scientific Director of the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He was as well Guest Professor at Syracuse University, Guest Lecturer at Princeton University, and Hans and Roger Strauch Visiting Critic at Cornell University.

He is the author of numerous book publications, lately Sortenrein Bauen (2023, DETAIL with Ludwig Wappner et. al.), Clean Energy Transition and Digital Transformation (2023, Birkhäuser with Felix Heisel, Andreas Wagner and Moritz Dörstelmann), Circular Construction and Circular Economy (2022, Birkhäuser with Felix Heisel and Ken Webster), Urban Mining und Kreislaufgerechtes Bauen (Urban Mining and Circular Construction) (2021, Fraunhofer Verlag, with Felix Heisel), Addis Ababa: A Manifesto on African Progress (2018, Ruby Press, with Felix Heisel, Marta Wisniewska and Sophie Nash), Cultivated Building Materials (2017, Birkhäuser, with Felix Heisel), SUDU – The Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (2015, Ruby Press, with Melakeselam Moges and Zara Gray), Building from Waste: Recovered Materials in Architecture and Construction (2014, Birkhäuser, with Marta H. Wisniewska and Felix Heisel), and Cities of Change: Addis Ababa (2009/2016 (2nd revised edition), Birkhäuser, with Marc Angélil). In 2008, he published the book Deviations (2008, Birkhäuser, with Marc Angélil), an experiment in architectural design pedagogy and in 2005 Bathroom Unplugged (2005, Birkhäuser, with Jörg Stollmann).

Currently, Dirk E. Hebel is co-founder and partner of 2hs Architekten und Ingenieur PartGmbB Hebel Heisel Schlesier, practicing architecture with a focus on resource-respectful construction methods and materials. He was also one of the founding partners of INSTANT Architects (2002-2008). Latest building projects include the winning project of Solar Decathlon 21/22 RoofKIT (2022, 2hs (Prof. Karsten Schlesier) with KIT Faculty of Architecture), the Mehr.Wert Pavillion for the BUGA Heilbronn (2019, 2hs, Simon Sommer, Lisa Krämer, Philipp Staab, Sophie Welter und Katna Wiese); the UMAR (Urban Mining and Recycling) project in Zürich for EMPA Dübendorf (2018 ,together with Werner Sobek and Felix Heisel); MycoTree, a project for the Seoul Architecture Biennale (2017, with Felix Heisel, Karsten Schlesier, Nazanin Saeidi and Alireza Javadian in cooperation with the Block Research Group Zürich, Philippe Block, Matthias Rippmann and Juney Lee); a school house complex for 1200 students in Cambodia for the NGO Smiling Gecko (2016-2018, together with Lisa Devenoge, Lorine Grossenbacher, Franziska Matt, Elizabeth Müller, Alina Wyder, and Marcel Aubert), the New York NoWaste Vault for IDEAS CITIES (2015, with Felix Heisel, Samuel P. Smith, Nicholas Ashby, Ruben Bernegger in cooperation with the Block Research Group Zürich, Philippe Block, Tomas Mendez Echenagucia); DISCOVERIES, an exhibition for the Foundation Lindau Nobel Prize Winners with Tobias Klauser; ON_AIR, an installation for KunstWerke Berlin; the award-winning project UNITED_BOTTLE; and HausBlick Düsseldorf, all with Jörg Stollmann, INSANT Architects, all 2002-2008.

His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions worldwide, lately in Plastic: Remaking our world, Vitra Design Museum Weil am Rhein (2022), Environmental Hangover by Pedro Wirz (with Nazanin Saeidi and Alireza Javadian), Kunsthalle Basel (2022), SORGE UM DEN BESTAND, BDA, Berlin and others, (2020/21), CRITICAL ZONES, ZKM Karlsruhe (2020), FUTURIUM Berlin (2019), the Beazly-Design of the Year Exhibition (2018), The Design Museum London (2018), Fibre Fixed: Composites in Design Exhibition, Design Museum Gent (2018), ORGATEC, Köln (2018), Super Materials London (2017), UK, the Design Fair Cologne (2017), Köln, the Seoul Architecture Biennale (2017), South Korea, or the Venice Architecture Biennale (2021/2018/2016), Italy.

As Faculty Advisor (together with Prof. Andreas Wagner), he won the Solar Decathlon Competition 21/22 as part of the KIT RoofKIT team (Regina Gebauer and Nicolas Carbonare), he received the Green Solution Award 2021, one of the German Material Awards 2019, two Innovation Awards “Bauhaus 100 – Prototyping the Future” organized by the Federal German Government and German Industry in 2019, the New York Van Alen Institute Fellowship Award, the Red Dot Design Award for Best Conceptual Design, the SMART Innovation Grant Singapore, the JEC Asia Innovation Award, a ZUMTOBEL GROUP Award, the Suzanne Underwood Award for Best Design, and the LANXESS Award Singapore. He was also awarded the KIT Best Teaching Award, KIT Faculty of Architecture, 2019.

As populations and aspirations grow, so does the demand for materials and resources to support them. Although such resource demands were once satisfied by local and regional hinterlands, they are becoming increasingly global in scale and reach. This phenomenon has generated material flows that are trans-continental and planetary in scope, and has profound consequences for the sustainability, functioning, sense of ownership and identity of future cities. However, the global concentration of the construction industry on a selected few mined materials puts high pressure on our natural resources. If we talk about the future city, it becomes clear that it cannot be built with the same finite resources.

The 21st century will face a radical paradigm shift in how we produce materials for the construction of our habitat. The linear concept of “produce, use, and discard” has proven itself unsustainable in the face of scarce resources and exponentially increasing urban populations. Instead, to achieve a cycle of production, use, and re-use, we must explore alternative materials and approaches to construction. The Professorship of Sustainable Construction Dirk E. Hebel at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Block Research Group (BRG) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich are combining their knowledge in materials, construction, structures, and geometry to address the problems posed by inefficiency in the realms of current design and material use.

Utilizing the regenerative materials mycelium and bamboo and a design based on polyhedral form and force diagrams controlling the geometry of the structure’s forces, this exhibition presents a full-scale vision for how we may move beyond the mining of our construction materials to their cultivation and urban growth. It suggests ways that efficiency of digital design and engineering and alternative resources can join forces to question current practice and propose more sustainable approaches.

Mycelium is the root network of mushrooms, a fast growing matrix that can act as a natural and self-assembling glue. Digesting plant-based waste products, such as saw dust, mycelium’s dense network of hyphae binds the substrate into a structurally active material composite. The advantages of such products are significant: As mycelium follows a metabolic cycle, building elements or whole constructions may be composted after their original use. The material may be grown locally, reducing both the energy and time required with transportation. And, as they are organic matter, they act to reverse carbon emissions through the absorption of carbon.

Mycelium based materials offer significant ecologic advantages on one hand but offer a comparably low structural strength on the other. When building with such weak materials, good geometry is essential for maintaining equilibrium through compression only. Such so-called funicular geometries have the advantage that their internal stresses are very low. While current conventional development of engineered materials, such as e.g. concrete and steel, is largely focused on making materials stronger by increasing their allowable stress, achieving stability through geometry instead allows the use of weak materials, such as mushroom mycelium, in structural applications.

We believe that local, regenerative and cultivated resources in combination with informed structural design, have the potential to become a very real alternative to established materials within the building industry.

Opening: 02. September 2017
Location: Donuimun Museum Village, Seoul, South Korea

Project Team:
Sustainable Construction, Dirk E. Hebel / KIT Karlsruhe & FCL Singapore
Professorship Philippe Block, Block Research Group / ETH Zürich
Karlsruhe: Karsten Schlesier, Felix Heisel
Zürich: Matthias Rippmann, Tomás Méndez Echenagucia, Juney Lee, Alessandro Dell’Endice, Andrew Liew, Noelle Paulson, Tom Van Mele
Singapore: Nazanin Saeidi, Alireza Javadian, Adi Reza Nugroho, Robbi Zidna Ilman, Erlambang Adjidarma, Hokie Christian, Orion Tan Sheng Yu, Kelly Cooper

Production partner:
Mycotech, PT Miko Bahtera Nusantara Indonesia

With kind support of:
Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
ETH Global, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany

Czafík, Michal (2017). Neformálnosť v knihe i krajine, ARCH Magazine 1-2/2017(Architektúra a bývanie): 59–60.

Book Review of Lessons of Informality in Slovakian Magazine ARCH:
Who would I recommend the book to? All who have the desire to indirectly find their way into life in a country that is still covered with a riddle of mystery. Urban designer, architect, sociologist, cultural scientist, anthropologist … I could continue to name myself. This confirms only one fact, that architecture has long been not only a mono-, but a multidisciplinary issue.

We say thank you!

Buxton, Pamella (2017). Fantastic Materials – and Where to Find Them, RIBA Journal Magazine.

Scientists are developing super materials from some most unlikely beginnings. Could spider silk ever be a useful (human) building material? How about transparent wood, ‘printed’ sandstone, or a bio-plastic derived from crabs hells? These and plenty more seemingly fantastical notions will be explored from February at The Building Centre’s SuperMaterial exhibition. (…) Architect Dirk Hebel has developed a new material made from bamboo fibres and resin that could be used to replace steel rebar.

SuperMaterial is a major public exhibition by The Built Environment Trust celebrating the essential, and often hidden, elements of our surroundings. Delving into the world of academia and science, we identify the latest laboratory-based discoveries and demonstrate how they will change our world – informing the R&D departments of today and transforming the buildings of our future. The project will also explore how the historical application of raw elements and minimally processed goods – the ‘super materials’ of their time – have shaped our urban fabric.

The show exhibits bamboo composite reinforcement produced by the Assistant Professorship Dirk E. Hebel at the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, the ETH Zürich in Switzerland. The display is on show at the Building Centre in London from February through April 2017.

View the SuperMaterial online exhibition here.

National Environmental Agency Singapore (2016). Pull-Out Test for Bamboo Composite Reinforcement at the Advanced Fibre Composite Laboratory, in Singapore’s Second Biennal Update Report 2016 – Under The United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change, 23. Singapore: National Environmental Agency Singapore.

The first research programme under the Singapore-ETH Centre, the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL), combines science and design to develop new knowledge, technologies, and approaches for a sustainable urban future with an Asian perspective. In addressing the challenges of rapid urbanisation, the FCL research team has developed innovative urban solutions in areas including urban design, mobility and transportation, low-energy cooling systems, and sustainable construction materials, among others.

For the first time Young Academics were awarded with the DVL Lehmbaupreis at Lehm 2016 – International Conference on Building with Earth in Weimar.

The prize aims to promote the study of earth building in academic context. It recognises academic work of excellent quality that demonstrates a firm knowledge of earth building and makes a forward-looking and original contribution in the fields of design, construction, research or development.

Philipp Müller was awarded with the second prize for his Master Thesis dealing with reliability analysis of earth block masonry structures as it can be seen as a major contribution to the efforts in regard of the ongoing standardization process in earth building. For more information, please click here.

Laukenmann, Joachim (2016). Ein Holz für alle Fälle, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 3./4. December 2016: 36–37

Bambus ist eigentlich gar kein Holz im engeren Sinne, sondem gehört zur Familie der Süßgraser. Auf der Basis von Bambusfasern und verschiedenen Harzen wurde zusammen mit der Firma Rehau und dem Future Cities Lab der ETH Zürich ein neues Komposit-Material hergestellt. Dieses Material weist äußerst hohe Festigkeitswerte auf und ist aufgrund der Witterungs-beständigkeit gut für Außen-anwendungen geeignet.

Herzog, Andres (2016). Der Materialmann, Hochparterre 10/16(Dirk Hebel: von der Expo-Wolke zum Pilzstein): 12–15.

Seit der Expo-Wolke erforscht der Architekt Dirk Hebel, wie wir mit Wasser, Pilzen oder Bambus bauen könnten. «Ich möchte aus Pilzen ein Haus wachsen lassen», sagt Dirk Hebel mit einem selbstverständlichen Grinsen auf dem Gesicht, als wäre die Rede von Backsteinen. Der ETH-Professor steht in seiner Wunderkammer im kühlen HIT-Gebäude auf dem Hönggerberg in Zürich. Im Gestell hinter ihm lagert Hebel die Materialien, die er derzeit auf der Architekturbiennale Venedig im Rahmen der Ausstellungsreihe «Time Space Existence» zeigt: Gemahlener Bauschutt, der mit gewachsenem Kalkstein zusammengehalten wird. Stühle, gepresst aus Altpapier. Beton, der sich dank eingelagerten Bakterien selber heilt, wenn sich Risse bilden. «Reporting from the front», so das Thema der diesjährigen Biennale, heisst bei Hebel: die Front von morgen.

On Monday 29th August, Philipp Müller and Simon Lee speak at the 3rd International Conference on Bio-based Polymers and Composites. The Bamboo Fibre Composite developed at the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore has a great potential as a viable and environmental friendly alternative for the construction sector. The talk will cover the newly developed manufacuring process and the mechanical properties of the material as well as give an outlook onto future challenges and opportunities for Bamboo Fibre Composites in the building industry.  Bamboo-based building materials can replace steel and concrete and be a major contribution to a more sustainable development of the construction.