Professur Nachhaltiges Bauen / Sustainable 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.

Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, the exhibition Critical Zones at ZKM questions the way we deal with our living space on earth. The exhibition explores new and possible forms of coexistence between all forms of life and shows ways of dealing with the current critical situation.

With the presentation of the MycoTree, the Chair of Sustainable Construction of the KIT Faculty of Architecture wants to contribute to this important discourse.

After all, future economic and ecological development worldwide is strongly linked to the question where our resources for future prosperity will come from. As our mines dry up and CO2 levels reach alarming levels, we have to radically rethink in all economic sectors. Until now, the earth’s natural resources have been extracted and disposed of in a linear process. This approach has profound consequences for our planet, which will become even worse unless a circular process is installed. Fungal research aims to establish new biological cycles in the construction industry.

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Images: Arno Kohlem and the Bio Design Lab HfG Karlsruhe

View the exhibition: https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2020/05/critical-zones

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.

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

Loam is produced by the natural weathering of rocks. It can be found almost everywhere and is considered a local building material – even on the Upper Rhine. It consists of different rock or particle sizes, from sand to silt to clay. If dried loam is combined with sufficient water, it becomes plastic again and can be brought into a new form.

In a joint seminar of the KIT Professorships of Sustainable Construction and Building Technology, a small rammed earth garden house is currently being built near Freiburg. After the material has been tested and suitable formwork has been built, the clay is currently being brought in and compacted.

The students received the basic and background knowledge in advance and currently have the opportunity to gain practical experience in this construction method under adapted conditions, to obtain technical know-how and to experience the materiality of rammed earth live.

Images: Katharina Blümke, Faculty of Architecture, KIT Karlsruhe

The student exercise ‘Vom Gartenhaus zum Räumling’ aimed to validate the potential of the urban mine. Using a garden shed near Karlsruhe as material depot, we carefully deconstructed the house and diligently documented each element. As a group, the students then designed a spatial installation utilizing only the harvested elements using no glue or permanent fixtures. After all, also this installation had to be designed for disassembly, providing building materials for yet another structure.

Project credits:
Mohammad Mouaz Alez, Katharina Blümke, Laura Maria Ganz, Felix Heisel, Ann-Kathrin Holmer, Hannah Hopp, Marie Kamp, Sophie Klaß, Antonia Kniep, Jan Matthies, Katrin Oldörp, Manuel Rausch, Andrea Cecilia Santos Rodríguez, Pia Antonia Thissen, Arta Topallaj, Lars-Erik de Vries

From shed to spatial object / Vom Gartenhaus zum Räumling by Felix Heisel on Vimeo.

Klaaßen, Lars (2020). Aus Pilz gebaut, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 18.07.2020, München, Germany

The Professorship of Sustainable Construction was entrusted with the reorganisation of the Material Library of the KIT Faculty of Architecture.

In addition to setting up a digital material library, the premises will also be restructured and brought up to a contemporary standard. After the renovation, the materials library will offer the opportunity to obtain comprehensive information about historical, most used, unusual and new materials. The materials can be physically experienced and personal advice can be obtained. The materials library becomes a place of encounter, exchange, research and investigation.

The renovation of the premises is supported by Wacker Chemie AG.

Images: Bernd Seeland, Faculty of Architecture, KIT Karlsruhe

The ChangeLab! website is online. The WACKER / KIT Innovation Platform for Pioneering Sustainable Construction is aiming to bring together KIT students, architects, engineers and construction experts seeking new approaches in the field of materials development and construction methods for a circular economy.
More information at: changelab.exchange

WACKER / KIT Innovation Platform for Pioneering Sustainable Construction

We are pleased to announce that WACKER Chemie AG is supporting the KIT Faculty of Architecture by setting up a new innovation platform for sustainable construction. The project “ChangeLab! WACKER / KIT Innovation Platform for Pioneering Sustainable Construction” is aiming to bring together KIT students, architects, engineers and construction experts seeking new approaches in the field of materials development and construction methods for a circular economy. Public lectures, symposia and ideas competitions are planned. All activities of the platform will be posted publicly on the website changelab.exchange, which goes live today.

The goal of the innovation platform is to forge stronger ties between researchers and practitioners at the various stages of the construction-sector supply chain. Events such as the “grow.build.repeat.” symposium, likely to be held in KIT’s Faculty of Architecture on December 3-4, 2020, will encourage discussions on the biological material cycle within the construction industry. (More information about “grow.build.repeat.”)

“The fact that we have gained WACKER’s support for the ChangeLab! platform is a huge boost for our work at the faculty and will prove highly inspirational for all those seeking to become involved in the future of construction,” explains Dirk E. Hebel, Professor of Sustainable Construction and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at KIT.

The Munich-based chemical Group WACKER also expects to gain major impetus from this collaboration with KIT. “Even in times of the coronavirus, sustainability remains a top priority for us,” says Peter Summo, president of the WACKER POLYMERS business division. “We are deliberately laying down a marker for the development of sustainable technologies in the construction sector. This is a matter of strategic importance to us.”

Beck, Gabriela (2020). Stark wie Stahl, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung s.41, Nr.90, Bauen und Wohnen, 18./19.04.2020. München , Germany

The Professorship of Sustainable Construction was entrusted with the reorganisation of the Materials Library of the KIT Faculty of Architecture. The conceptual and content-related reorganization is based on establishing a broad collection of the most used building materials in Europe. On top, new research and materials adressing questions of a circular construction economy as well as alternative building materials coming from either the urban mine or biological renewable ressources will establish a unique feature in Karlsruhe.

The setup and the management of the material library itself is the subject of research. The description and presentation of the materials is developed with the aim of enabling students, staff and guests of KIT to use the library for their own research the most easiest and low-threshold way. In near future, materials will be digitally and physically viewable, experiencable and comparable in order to establish an active place of exchange, debate and research within a motivating environment.

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.

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 exhibition “Local Stone” gives an insight into the new focus “Building Materials from Local Resources of our Region” of the KIT Material Library. Stone as a natural resource seems to be endlessly available. At the same time it is the result of a process that has been going on for millions of years and it`s mining always means a drastic intervention in ecosystems. Because of that the sensitive renaturation of former mining areas and the observance of short transport routes are essential. Finally, a sustainable, efficient and recyclable use of the material in architecture or other fields of application should be ensured.

In past epochs, natural stone stood for a massive construction method that was to radiate a certain social status, prestige, durability and solidity. Today we mostly know it as a popular material for curtain facades. New processing and construction methods using digital technologies, such as robot-assisted surface processing, are increasingly replacing traditional stonemasonry. However, this also resulted in a new aesthetic of surface design and new fields of application within architecture.

In the exhibition, the natural stone is presented in the form of samples using various regional species. These include sedimentary rocks, limestone but also gravel and sand.

Duration of the exhibition: 05 June 2019 – 05 July 2019

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

Success for KIT master students: at the second Urban Mining Student Award cycle, students of the Master course “Glück auf am Theodorschacht” organized and taught by the Professorship of Sustainable Construction at the Faculty of Architecture were extremely sucessfull. They won the first, two 3rd and two recognition prizes.

The age of using fossil resources is coming to an end. Far away from the Ruhr area the last days are counted for the German hard coal mining. The Ibbenbüren colliery in the northernmost tip of North Rhine-Westphalia was one of the last two of its kind and was closed at the end of 2018. The surface facilities of the mine are located at various shaft locations and were asked to be re-designed and reused as a public cultural facility, understanding the existing structures and materials as a new ressource for architectural planning.

The award was organized by the agn Niederberghaus & Partner GmbH together with the University of Wuppertal (BUW) and the Association Urban Mining. It recognizes concepts, ideas and strategies for promoting a consistent circular economy. The reusability of the construction and the recyclability of the building materials, together with the reuse of used components and a high level of repair friendliness, are in the foreground of the considerations. Further criteria were the flexibility of the building structures as a prerequisite for reuse and reuse, low space and water consumption, the highest possible building self-sufficiency with low-tec solutions for operational and energy efficiency as well as the promotion of micro-climate and biodiversity.

Winning projects of KIT:
First prize winners: Sofie Fettig and Torben Ewaldt
3rd prize winners: Marieteres Medynska and Jasmin Amann / Ruth Meigen and Lisa-Maria Behringer
Recognition prize winners: Katharina Blümke and Paulina Hipp / Wenzel Meyer and Corinna Kernl
Sudio organization and teaching: Felix Heisel and Karsten Schlesier
Studio consolidation: Prof. Andreas Wagner

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.

One of the new focal points of the KIT Material Library is “Building Materials from Local Resources of our Region”. This topic stands in addition to the reuse, recycling and cultivation of building materials, for a responsible use of resources.

Through the worldwide ruthless extraction of the most diverse raw materials and their transport across the globe, we have severely damaged our natural environment. It has been and continues to be exploited that in many countries there are insufficient or no regulations to protect nature.

In addition to research into alternative building materials, we therefore also focus on the environmentally friendly use of local resources, such as indigenous wood species. Through the KIT Materials Library, we can draw attention to this topic and provide comprehensive information. The collection of european wood species has recently been expanded. The exhibition “Local Wood” (“Heimisches Holz”) presents these new additions. Above all, the exhibition is intended to invite visitors to a haptic examination of the materials.

Duration of the exhibition:
15 April 2019 – 20 May 2019

Concept and organization: Sandra Böhm

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.

For a long time, ceramics were mostly used for pragmatic construction solutions. Today, a number of innovative technologies have given it a new significance within architecture. These innovations can be found in the material development, in manufacturing processes or in individual application scenarios. Generative technologies offer high potential in terms of resource-efficient production. This is because the layer-by-layer additive manufacturing process only makes material necessary where it is required due to aesthetic criteria and mechanical stress.

In the research seminar “Build up!” students dealt with the development of innovative building materials using ceramic 3D printing. The seminar was held by the Professorship Sustainable Construction in cooperation with the Majolika Ceramics Manufactory in Karlsruhe. The exhibition in the Material Library uses posters, material experiments and printed objects to illustrate the course of the project and further ideas of the group work.

Exhibition duration and location:
20 February to early April 2019
Material Library (Bld. 20.40, R 141)

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 Alternative Construction Materials Module FCL and the Professorship of Dirk E. Hebel at KIT Karlsruhe has also taken responsibility for design and construction of the second and third phase of the project. Currently the team has finished the production of newly developed bamboo composite elements as an external wall cladding element. The team together with Mycotech from Indonesia has also finished the production and installation of innovative mycelium tiles as an internal wall cladding and is currently finalizing the design for the 3^rd floor of the building, which should be finished also this year.

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“

One year after the completion of the structures and 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 in early December 2018. The celebrations stretched over two days. The first day started with a lunch in the kitchen of the new food processing center, open since November 2018, where students and the invited guests got to know each other better. The aim of the second day was to give the guests an insight into the school life of the children.

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 architectural project was designed by Lisa Devenoge, Oliver Faber, Lorine Grossenbacher, Franziska Matt, Elizabeth Müller, and Alina Wyder with Prof. Dirk E. Hebel under the request of the NGO Smiling Gecko.

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

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

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.

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).

»Die Stadt der Zukunft unterscheidet nicht zwischen Abfall und Vorrat«, umschreiben die Wissenschaftler den zugrundeliegenden Forschungsansatz der Experimentaleinheit mit einem Zitat von Mitchell Joachim, Vorreiter eines ökologischen Planungsansatzes. Die Urban Mining & Recycling (UMAR)-Unit ergänzt seit Februar 2018 als experimentelles Wohnmodul das modulare Forschungs- und Innovationsgebäude NEST auf dem Campus der Eidgenössischen Materialprüfungs- und Forschungsanstalt (Empa) in schweizerischen Dübendorf. Der Entwurf stammt von Werner Sobek mit Dirk E. Hebel und Felix Heisel. Sobek ist Leiter des Instituts für Leichtbau Entwerfen und Konstruieren der Universität Stuttgart, Hebel und Heisel sind Leiter und Forschungsverantwortlicher des Fachgebiets Nachhaltiges Bauen am KIT Karlsruhe und am Singapore ETH-Centre.

Read the full article here.

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).

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.

As Addis Ababa creaks under the weight of a mushrooming populace, sub-Saharan Africa’s largest housing project is under way. But who benefits? Wrapped in a white shawl and sporting a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, Haile stares out at his cattle as they graze in a rocky patch of grass. “My family and I have been here since I was a child,” he says, nodding at the small, rickety houses to his right. “But we will have to leave soon.” In the distance loom hulking grey towers, casting long shadows over his pasture. This is Koye Feche, a vast construction site on the edge of Addis Ababa that may soon be sub-Saharan Africa’s largest housing project.

The Guardian, by Tom Gardner in Addis Ababa, Interview with Felix Heisel. Photographs by Charlie Rosser.

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.