MAISON FIBRE – VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL
17th International Architecture Exhibition–La Biennale di Venezia 2021

The contribution of the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE) at the University of Stuttgart to the Biennale Architettura 2021 is an exploration of an alternative material culture, a term commonly used in the social sciences and the humanities. Maison Fibre, the central display of the exhibition, is both a full-scale architectural installation and an open model for the cultural change being postulated. It deals with the departure from pre-digital, material-intensive construction using mostly heavy, isotropic building materials such as concrete, stone, and steel—which are often extracted in faraway places, processed into building elements, and then transported over long distances—to genuinely digital construction methods with locally differentiated and locally manufactured structures made of highly anisotropic materials: an architecture made of fibers.

Maison Fibre is based on a decade of research on robotically manufactured fiber composite structures. It is the first multi-story architecture of this kind, featuring inhabitable fibrous floor slabs and walls. The entire structure consists exclusively of so-called fiber rovings, essentially bundles of endless, unidirectional fibers. To underline the model character of the project, a system of reconfigurable wall and ceiling elements based on the 2.5-meter grid dimension typical of residential buildings was developed.

The project’s projective aspect is derived from its reference to a formative model of architectural history, Le Corbusier’s Maison Dom-Ino. The floor area of the installation corresponds to the historical reference, as does the division over three floors and the versatile, expandable system. The radically different nature of the fibrous – compared to tectonics of the massive – can be experienced spatially and tactilely by the visitors. Another key difference is the possible adaptability and thus the interaction with the existing building stock, which will be decisive for future urban buildings. This is deliberately emphasized by integrating the existing columns of the Arsenale building into the installation.

For a detailed description and more images please view:

https://www.icd.uni-stuttgart.de/projects/maison-fibre/

_______________

PROJECT TEAM

ICD Institute for Computational Design, University of Stuttgart
Prof. Achim Menges, Niccolo Dambrosio, Katja Rinderspacher, Christoph Zechmeister. Rebeca Duque Estrada, Fabian Kannenberg, Christoph Schlopschnat

ITKE Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design, University of Stuttgart
Prof. Jan Knippers, Nikolas Früh, Marta Gil Pérez, Riccardo La Magna

Lab support: Aleksa Arsic, Sergej Klassen, Kai Stiefenhofer

Student Assistance: TzuYing Chen, Vanessa Costalonga Martins, Sacha Cutajar, Christo van der Hoven, Pei-Yi Huang, Madie Rasanani, Parisa Shafiee, Anand Nirbhaybhai Shah, Max Benjamin Zorn

In collaboration with: FibR GmbH, Stuttgart
Moritz Dörstelmann, Ondrej Kyjanek, Philipp Essers, Philipp Gülke
with support of: Erik Zanetti, Elpiza Kolo, Prateek Bajpai, Jamiel Abubaker, Konstantinos Doumanis, Julian Fial, Sergio Maggiulli

PROJECT SUPPORT

University of Stuttgart
Cluster of Excellence IntCDC, EXC 2120
Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts, Baden-Württemberg

GETTYLAB
Teijin Carbon Europe GmbH
Elisabetta Cane with Bipaled s.r.l.

Trimble Solutions Germany GmbH