Professur Nachhaltiges Bauen / Sustainable Construction

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

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

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

On February 8th 2018, Werner Sobek, Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel officially opened Urban Mining and Recycling UMAR, the newest addition to the Empa NEST. The project is underpinned by the proposition that all the resources required to construct a building must be fully reusable, recyclable or compostable. This places life-cycle thinking at the forefront of the design: Instead of merely using and subsequently disposing of resources, they are borrowed from their technical and biological cycles for a certain amount of time before being put back into circulation once again. Such an approach makes reusing and repurposing materials just as important as recycling and upcycling them (both at a systemic and a molecular/biological level, e.g. via melting or composting). This conceptual emphasis means that UMAR functions simultaneously as a material laboratory and a temporary material storage.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 October 30th, Prof. Dirk E. Hebel gave the Hans and Roger Strauch Visiting Critic Lecture at Cornell University. Each semester the Department of Architecture of Cornell University hosts a rich and varied lecture series that serves to extend the pedagogy of classes and design studios. Invited speakers represent a range of professional, teaching, and research interests that engage issues vital to the study and practice of architecture.

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.

The Chair of Sustainable Construction hosted this week a filmcrew of ARTE/ZDF to shoot a XENIUS episode on the research of bamboo materials of the team. It will be shown shortly on public German TV. Our thanks go to Prof. Hans-Joachim Blass, Matthias Frese and Alexander Klein and the rest of the team for using the VAKA hall for the event. Also thanks to Karsten Schlesier of our team organizing the day.

Starting in the Winter Semester 2017/18, the KIT Faculty of Architecture will offer a lecture series on Materials, organized by the chair of Sustainable Construction, Dirk E. Hebel. In total 13 lectures will address conventional and alternative building materials and their use in construction. Speakers are: Sandra Böhm, Wayne Switzer, Karsten Schlesier, Andreas Mägerlein, Felix Heisel, and Prof. Dirk E. Hebel. Please refer to the poster for actual dates. The lecture is held everyFriday, 09:45am in Lecture Hall Egon-Eiermann at KIT Campus South, Building 20.40.

Poster Design: Uta Bogenrieder

Starting in the Fall Semester 2017/18, the KIT Faculty of Architecture will offer a lecture series on Sustainable Construction, organized by the chair of Sustainable Construction, Dirk E. Hebel. In total 14 lectures will address the history, state of the art, and alternative futures within the theme. Speakers are: Michael Dax, Daniel Fuhrhop, Monika Goebel, Prof. Petra v. Both, Felix Heisel, Prof. Andreas Wagner, Prof. Matthias Pfeifer, Prof. Thomas Lützkendorf, Jan Wurm, and Prof. Dirk E. Hebel. Please refer to the poster for actual dates. The lecture is held every Wednesday, 09:45 am in Lecture Hall 9 (HS09) at KIT Campus South, Building 20.40.

Poster Design: Uta Bogenrieder

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Veranstaltungsort:
Ehemaliges Straßenbahndepot
Talstraße 2
52068 Aachen

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

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

Anmeldeschluss ist der 16.06.2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following approaches lie at the heart of the design:

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

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

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

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

Opening: February 2018

Project Team:

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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