Professur Nachhaltiges Bauen / Sustainable Construction

Prof. Dirk E. Hebel in discussion about a rising circular building economy.

A talk in “Zukunft Bauen” with Prof. Dirk E. Hebel (Sustainable Construction, Faculty of Architecture, KIT Karlsruhe) and Dr. Lamia Messari-Becker (Building Technology and Building Physics, Institute of Architecture, University of Siegen) about rethinking the construction industry and its bound building materials as a raw materials warehouse in order to preserve the earth’s resources and about the paradigm change in future architectural planning and construction.

The public German TV station ZDF films at the KIT MycoLab for their format PUR+. PUR + is the discovery magazine in the children’s and youth program ZDFtivi. Each episode deals with one topic. Reports, explanations, and experiments shed light on the topic from different angles. The program focuses on the experiences and assessments of children. At KIT, Eric, the protganist of the format, explores together with the team of Prof. Dirk E. Hebel and Nazanin Saeidi the idea of using mycelium as an innovative building material of the future.

KIT professor Dirk E. Hebel writes about Germany as a country with an incredibly large anthropogenic material store but with a lack of ideas how to use it. Our cities have the potential to be transformed into urban mines, to consumers and suppliers of resources. The challenge of an infinite cycle of resources lies in new construction methods and technologies to reach a new generation of building materials and methods that are qualitatively sustainable, ecologically harmless, technically pure, economically attractive and endlessly recyclable.

The Mehr.WERT.Pavillon serves as a clear example for this. All materials used in the project have already gone through at least one life cycle, in the same or modified form. The Mehr.WERT.Pavillon proves overall the applicability of the raw material warehouse – also in structural applications – and shows the beauty inherent in the respective materials.

Hebel, Dirk E. (2020). Ungeheure Möglichkeiten, in: der architekt. material der stadt. 4/2020 (Bund Deutscher Architekten BDA), Berlin, Germany

Marie-Dominique Wetzel, cultural correspondent from SWR2, talks with KIT professor Dirk E. Hebel about his vision of sustainable architecture as a part of the movement against climate change and the destruction of the environment. He emphasizes the importance of research on new building technologies in consideration of the fact that the earth’s resources are more and more declining. Therefore a change in awareness to the cycle-oriented and gradual use of building materials is inevitable for present and future architects.

Video on: https://www.swr.de/swr2

The winners of the third Urban Mining Student Award have been announced: From the total of 20 submitted design proposals, the jury awarded two first prizes and five recognitions. One of the two first prizes went to Jan Matthies & Andrea Santos Rodríguez from the KIT Faculty of Architecture. Hannah Hopp, Viola Winterstein, Laura Ganz and Pia Thisssen were delighted to receive recognitions. The design of Jan Matthies and Andrea Santos Rodríguez convinced the jury mostly by their consequent use of existing building elements coming from the urban mine and their ability to create unique and high quality spatial arrangements adequate for young children.

This year the planning task of the German-wide, open student competition was to plan a travelling school project for Cologne in order to cope with the immense investment backlog regarding reorganization measures in German schools. In order to ensure the continuation of the school operations during these construction measures, the City of Cologne needs an alternative that provides temporary, flexibly relocatable and pedagogically valuable alternative rooms. For KIT, the competition was accompanied by the Professorship of Sustainable Construction, Dirk E. Hebel, Katharina Blümke and Felix Heisel.

The furniture series Prei is made up of used paper and includes a variety of
stools, a bench, trash bins and a shelf. The project was already born several years ago out of the wish to create hand-crafted products from recyclable materials. Used paper is a ressource that constantly surrounds us. The addition of natural additives creates a stable material. Vegetable dies give the objects their final charakter and offer a color variety.

Video on: www.ardmediathek.de

More information on: www.sandraboehm.de

The quantities are gigantic: mankind currently consumes 40 to 50 billion tons of sand per year. This is the result of a study carried out by the UN Environmental Programme UNEP in 2019, making sand one of the most important trading raw materials of all and the second largest traded and mined resource of our time after water.

Prof. Dirk E. Hebel in: Sakowitz, Sven (2020). Uns geht der Sand aus, HÖRZU Wissen.

Ulrich Coenen, BNN: Interview with Prof. Dirk E. Hebel (2020)

The two-part-interview is about Sustainable Thinking, Acting and Building, technical and biological circulations, unmixed and pure construction methods and the application and practice of urban mining. Furthermore they discuss practices of energetic redevelopment of existing buildings and the establishment of new building materials and future energy efficient technologies.

in: Badische Neueste Nachrichten, 11th & 18th February 2020: no. 34 & 40

Urban Mining and Recycling (UMAR)

The Urban Mining and Recycling (UMAR) housing and research unit in NEST, the modular Research and Innovation Building of Empa and Eawag in Dübendorf (Switzerland), is demonstrating what a paradigm shift in the construction industry reacting to the limitation of the world’s natural resources might look like. Turning away from linear material-consumption and towards an economy of material recycling, multiple use, alternative construction methods and the use of entirely separable materials – UMAR works as a material laboratory but also as a material depot. It is a proof that the responsible use of natural resources, the recycling of materials and modern architecture can go hand in hand. Design Team: Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel, Bernd Köhler, Frank Heinlein

Bau auf! Kreislaufgerechte Architektur in der Lehre

Traditional materials combined with new technologies: the building material ceramic is undergoing a revival in the research seminar „Bau auf! Kreislaufgerechte Architektur in der Lehre“, offered by the Majolika Karlsruhe and the Department of Sustainable Construction at Karlsruhe’s KIT. The creation of awareness that traditional materials and old material knowledge combined with digital planning methods can lead to innovative solutions was one of the main objectives of the seminar. In the end, innovative facade systems, shading elements and plantable spatial structures were created. Seminar leadership: Sandra Böhm, Dirk E. Hebel

in: BAUART – Architektur und Kultur, inspiriert durch Heimat, Ausgabe 03/2020

Michael Hosch received this honorable mention award with his semester project “MICMAC – MICRO UNITS – MACRO BENEFITS”, conceived in the 5th semester of bachelor studies at KIT under the guidance of the Professorships Sustainable Construction (Hebel, Lenz, Rausch), Building Physics (A. Wagner) , Structural Design (M. Pfeifer) and Building Economy (K. Fischer). The university initiative “Modern Expansion and Lightweight Construction” has set itself the task of working together with universities to advance teaching in this field by organizing – among other activities – this university competition.

Image © copyright by Thomas Müller

Lukas Gerling wins with his Master-Thesis “Future Fessenheim” developed under the guidance of the Professorships of Sustainable Construction Dirk E. Hebel and Landscape Design Prof. Henri Bava the KIT-Sparkassen Environmental Award 2019. His work on the future of the nuclear power plant in Fessenheim was seen by the jury as an highly impotant and socially relevant theme within the international border area of France and Germany. With extraordinary precision derived from his critical-theoretical approach, he developed a design that combines different interpretations, states of memory and fear, architectural elements from present and past, international actors and new local actions. The actual nuclear power plant transformed Lukas Gerling into an expressive “pioneer building” as a public space with offers for cultural exchange, cultural creation and meeting places. By transforming the former reactor building into a space of silence and introversion, Lukas Gerling proves his sensitivity to space and architecture in exchange with psychology and social responsibility. His work was carried out under the Dual Masters Program between the ENSAS Strasbourg and the KIT Faculty of Architecture in Kalsruhe.

Image © copyright by Karlsruher Institut für Technologie Allgemeine Services

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.

Bei der Premiere des Preises wurden insgesamt sechs Bauwerke ausgezeichnet. Mit dabei: die Passerelle de deux Rives über den Rhein, die Kellerwirtschaft in Vogtsburg, eine Kita in Lahr und der Nachwuchspreis für die KIT Studentin. Den mit 2000 Euro dotierten Nachwuchspreis, der direkt von der Jury vergeben wurde, erhielt Anne-Caterine Greiner für Unterkünfte für Saisonarbeitskräfte in Schallstadt-Mengen, ein Semesterentwurf am Fachgebiet Nachhaltiges Bauen. Bei dem Projekt seien primär lokale Handwerker und Produkte eingesetzt worden, sagte die Architekturstudentin bei ihrer Dankesrede.

Students, researchers and professors of KIT Karlsruhe, together with the architects’ office 2hs, realized this circular pavilion from recycling materials at the Federal Garden Show 2019 in Heilbronn. The ‘Mehr.WERT.Pavillon’ is part of the so-called ‘Mehr.WERT.Garten’, a partner project of the Ministry of the Environment of Baden-Württemberg with the Entsorgungsbetriebe of the city of Heilbronn. It explores the question how we and future generations can live well and how we can develop our economy positively without consuming any of the scarce resources of our planet.

More information here.

BUILDING WITH RECYCLATES IS FEASIBLE

The Department of Sustainable Construction at the Institute of Design and Building Technology at Karlsruhe’s KIT develops concepts that can tame the immense consumption of building resources – and regularly provides project evidence that it is already possible to plan and build in a cycle-oriented manner today.

It is clear that supplies will run out at some point, one look into the fridge at home makes this principle quickly comprehensible for everyone. However, the transfer of this simple knowledge to the global scale poses great problems for mankind. The consumption of resources is higher than ever – and continues to accelerate. Although the finiteness of natural resources, especially non-renewable ones, is undeniable, we are successfully ignoring this. The so-called Earth Overshoot Day, the date on which the annual supply of renewable resources is exhausted, is moving inexorably towards the beginning of the year. In 2009, this date had already slipped to 29 July on 25 September, ten years later. Germany even reached this year’s date on 24 April. To quote Harald Welzer: “We live in a society in which knowledge is taught and ignorance is practised”. Or further thought: Knowledge and the implementation of knowledge are apparently two fundamentally different things, also with regard to the use and reuse of resources.

Text: Armin Scharf; Photos: Zooey Braun, braun-steine, Carlina Teteris

This publication presents the results of a design semester on the topic of the creation of affordable living space through a strategy of redensification in our cities at the Department of Sustainable Construction Prof. Dirk E. Hebel at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The work was developed in cooperation with the Volkswohnung GmbH Karlsruhe, which offered students the opportunity to present innovative proposals for a concrete construction project as an extension of an existing building in Karlsruhe. In the spirit of integral planning and a holistic approach, the designs were prepared in close cooperation with lecturers from the fields of structural design, building physics and building economics.

Editorial Staff: Sonja Steenhoff, Daniel Lenz, Manuel Rausch. Graphic Concept and Design: Uta Bogenrieder and Sonja Steenhoff, KIT Karlsuhe, Professorship of Sustainable Construction Dirk E. Hebel, October 2019, 162p.

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.

The Mehr.WERT.Pavillon at the BUGA Heilbronn has won a materialPREIS award 2019 in the category “Public Voting”. The award is organized by the material agency RaumPROBE Stuttgart. The pavilion design originated in the design studio Building from Waste of the Professorship of Sustainable Construction at KIT Karlsruhe (Felix Heisel, Karsten Schlesier and Prof. Dirk E. Hebel). It was further developed by KIT students Lisa Krämer, Simon Sommer, Philipp Staab, Sophie Welter, and Katna Wiese in collaboration with the Professorships Structural Design (Prof. Matthias Pfeifer / Certification engineer) and Building Technologies (Prof. Rosemarie Wagner / Structural form finding), as well as the office 2hs Architekten und Ingenieur PartGmbB. 

From the organizers: “The materialPREIS has been the only award in the architecture and design industry to focus on the development as well as the planning and use of special materials. The laureates of recent years have seen pioneering innovations, clever developments, outstanding buildings and visionary studies that stand out from the crowd. The high quality and innovative power has made the materialPREIS an appropriate seal right from the start. The submissions and, above all, the winners, are perceived very positively and considered in detail in the specialist world. The award recognizes special developments and new materials from the manufacturers as well as built projects by planners and creative people. Due to a changing, independent jury, only three awards are given in several categories.”

The international competition “beyond bauhaus – prototyping the future”, sought ground-breaking design ideas and concepts that address a socially relevant topic and provide creative answers to the pressing questions of our time. Almost 1500 projects coming from 50 countries applied for an award. The 20 award winners convinced the international jury with their ideas and concepts. The spectrum of entries reflects the challenges of our time: it ranges from food cultivation on the water to individually dosed medicine and new technologies for urban development to sustainable building materials. The Professorship of Sustainable Construction Dirk E. Hebel together with Philippe Block and Juney Lee from ETH Zürich (Mycotree) and Werner Sobek and Bernd Köhler from the Werner Sobek Group Stuttgart (UMAR) won two of the awards.

Renewable building material for the city of tomorrow

Steel and concrete—these are the first materials that come to mind when one thinks about building. But our resources are finite, which is why construction must break new ground. Scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) with its research outpost FCL in Singapore are leading the way by researching alternatives to conventional building materials. A result of years of research is “MycoTree”, a self-supporting structure made of fungal mycelium and bamboo. Design Team: KIT: Dirk E. Hebel, Felix Heisel, Karsten Schlesier, ETHZ: Philippe Block, Juney Lee, Matthias Rippmann, Tomas Mendez Echenagucia, Andrew Liew, Noelle Paulson, Tom van Mele, SEC/FCL: Nazanin Saeidi, Alireza Javadian, Adi Reza Nugroho, Robbi Zidna Ilman, Erlambang Adjidarma, Ronaldiaz Hartantyo, Hokie Christian, Orion Tan, Sheng Yu, Kelly Cooper

Closed material cycles in civil engineering

The world’s natural resources are limited, which is why we need to rethink how we use and reuse everything — away from linear material-consumption and towards an economy of recycling. The Urban Mining and Recycling (UMAR) housing and research unit of the Swiss research institute Empa at “NEST” is demonstrating what this paradigm shift in the construction industry might look like. Architects Werner Sobek, Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel have come up with a building concept that uses entirely separable resources, either reusable or compostable: mortar-free, folding walls made of recycled demolition debris, bathroom cladding made of recycled plastic chopping-boards, or mushroom mycelium as compostable wall-insulation. UMAR is thus not only a material laboratory but also a material depot. It is also proof that responsible use of natural resources and modern architecture can go hand in hand. Design Team: Werner Sobek mit Dirk E. Hebel und Felix Heisel, Bernd Köhler, Frank Heinlein

More information here.

“The illustration shows an excerpt from the Mehr.WERT.Pavillon, which was recently opened on the Heilbronn BUGA site, where all the materials used have already undergone at least one life cycle – either in the same or modified form. “Anders Bauen” does not always have to mean that no new materials are used, but intelligent, restrained and gentle handling of materials and ressources should always be the goal. And so, for this issue, which continues our series of congresses and booklets on Sufficiency in building culture, we also tracked down projects (new buildings and conversions) that live up to this claim. Housing models, working environments, office buildings as well as cultural and community centers, where the clients and architects asked themselves before the planning process began: how much space do we really need and how can we optimally use and design it? Which functions can be organized jointly, which ones individually? And what can be obtained from the found, what is added meaningfully new? Good usable and used architecture, which also provides food for thought – like the experimental pavilion.” db

More information here.

Glück auf am Theodorschacht! The winners of the second Urban Mining Student Award have been announced: The first prize in this student competition goes to Torben Ewaldt and Sofie Fettig from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). They were able to convince the jury with their resource-saving draft of a conference and learning center for circular economy. The planning task of this Germany-wide, open student competition was to design a conference and learning center for circular economy and resource conservation at the Theodorschacht in Ibbenbüren. The mine was closed at the end of last year as one of the last two coal mines in Germany. The task was to strengthen the place with its historical significance and to enrich it with forward-looking use.

From the total of 34 submitted design proposals, the jury awarded four prizes and five recognitions. The first prize went to Torben Ewaldt & Sofie Fettig from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; Jan Martin Müller of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal was awarded the second prize, and Lisa-Maria Behringer & Ruth Mathilda Meigen as well as Jasmin Amann & Marieteres Medynska were delighted to receive two third prizes each.

More information here.

Wie sich vorhandene Rohstoffe nachhaltig in das Bauwesen einbinden lassen, zeigt ein Pavillon, der als Gemeinschaftsprojekt von Studierenden des KIT und den Fachgebieten Nachhaltiges Bauen (Professor Dirk E. Hebel), Tragkonstruktion (Professor Matthias Pfeifer) und Bautechnologie (Professorin Rosemarie Wagner) entstanden ist. Der Pavillon ist Teil des Mehr.WERT.Gartens, eines gemeinsamen Projektes des baden-württembergischen Umweltministeriums und der Entsorgungsbetriebe der Stadt Heilbronn, und steht – selbst vollständig aus wiederverwendeten und -verwerteten Materialien entworfen und realisiert – symbolisch für die Notwendigkeit, recycelte Ressourcen nicht länger als Müll zu betrachten, sondern deren Potenzial zu nutzen. Den Initiatoren geht es darum, einen Paradigmenwechsel, wie wir mit unseren Ressourcen wirtschaften, voranzutreiben. Das aktuell vorherrschende, sogenannte lineare Wirtschaftsmodell der Massenproduktion und des Massenkonsums, bzw. der Wegwerfwirtschaft, muss sich ändern, hin zu einer Kreislaufwirtschaft aus geschlossenen und reinen Stoffkreisläufen. Der Mehr.WERT.Pavilion ist das Herzstück einer Ausstellung über lokale und globale Ressourcennutzung und alternativen Materialien und deren Anwendungen.

more information here.

We are happy to announce the publication of the new DGNB (German Association of Sustainable Construction) report on Circular Economy with several contributions from the Professorship of Sustainable Construction at KIT Karlsruhe, including next to several projects carried out by the team over the past months (UMAR Experimental Unit in Dübendorf, Switzerland and the MycoTree project for the Seoul Biennale, South-Korea) also a pedagocical concept of a new Material Library at the Faculty of Architecture at KIT Karlsruhe.

The concept of a Circular Economy is intended to ensure the availability and quality of resources for future generations through appreciation, reuse and recycling. With the new report, the DGNB want to demonstrate the potential of a circular economy in the construction industry and promote its implementation and integration into construction practice. The publication is dedicated to the responsible use of resources and the manifold requirements of a circular economy in the context of building planning, implementation and use.

Download-Link: „Circular Economy – Kreisläufe schließen, heißt zukunftsfähig sein“

The publication presents the results of a design and research semester on agricultural monuments of tobacco cultivation in the municipality of Hayna / Pfalz at the Professorship of Sustainable Construction Dirk E. Hebel at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The work was carried out in close collaboration with the citizens of the municipality Hayna and scientists of the KIT from the areas of structural engineering, building physics, historic preservation and building economics. The studio dealt with the central themes of economic and environmental sustainability, the conscious use of resources and the question of existing social and cultural values ​​and related identities.

Editorial Staff: Sonja Steenhoff, Daniel Lenz, Manuel Rausch. Graphic Concept and Design: Uta Bogenrieder and Sonja Steenhoff, KIT Karlsuhe, Professorship of Sustainable Construction Dirk E. Hebel, December 2018, 195p.

Walls made of old beverage packaging, roofs made of metal waste: houses can be built from recycled materials. Now scientists are trying to make the energy and resource-saving building materials competitive. Article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. December 18, 2018, by Andrea Hoferichter, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Deutschland S.14.

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.

Dirk. E. Hebel, our Urban Miner of the month October, is professor for Sustainable Construction. Currently he teaches at the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie. One of his latest projects using exclusively recycled building materials was UMAR. In his answers he puts the focus on his work and points out, that the Netherlands are the leading nation in the field of reuse and recycling in the building sector.

Read full texte here

For materials that are no longer needed, there was for the longest time only one word: waste. Following this linear mentality of “take, make and waste” the term “disposable society” came up in the second half of the 20th century. With the start of the oil crisis in the 1970s this ideology started slowly to be rethought. Today, people talk less about waste when dealing with materials they no longer need. One speaks of “ressources”. In form of an interview, Werner Sobek and Dirk E. Hebel take their latetst building project UMAR to discuss future concepts of a circular econmy within the built environment. They formulate where in their view future research, teaching concepts and practical work need to address one of the most important questions of the 21st century: where to source the materials to build for more with less.

Read the full interview here (in German).

Echte Innovationen für ein nachhaltigeres Bauen finden nur sehr langsam den Weg auf die Bau­stelle – auch weil niemand das Risiko eingehen möchte, sie als Erster unter realen Bedingungen zu testen. Ein ganz besonderes Haus nahe Zürich schafft Abhilfe.

Read the full article here.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Read the full article here.

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

“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.