livMatS PAVILION
Botanic Garden Freiburg

Over the past century, the construction industry has become one of the most material-intensive and environmentally detrimental human activities. Located in the Botanical Garden of the University of Freiburg, the livMatS Pavilion offers a viable, resource-efficient alternative to conventional construction methods and therefore represents an important step towards sustainability in architecture. It constitutes the first building ever with a load-bearing structure that is entirely made of robotically wound flax fibre, a material that is fully naturally renewable, biodegradable, and regionally available in Central Europe.

Enabled by a novel combination of natural materials and advanced digital technologies, this pavilion stems from the successful collaboration of an interdisciplinary team of architects and engineers of the ITECH master`s programme at the Cluster of Excellence »Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture (IntCDC)« at the University of Stuttgart and biologists from the Cluster of Excellence »Living, Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Material Systems (livMatS)« at the University of Freiburg.

The bioinspired pavilion showcases how novel co-design processes that account concurrently for geometrical, material, structural, productional, environmental, and aesthetic requirements, together with advanced robotic fabrication techniques applied to natural materials, are capable to generate a unique architecture that is at the same time ecological and expressive. The distinctive, intricate surface appearance of the structural flax elements is evocative of both vernacular examples of latticework and biological systems.

For a detailed description and more images please view:

https://www.icd.uni-stuttgart.de/projects/livMatS-Pavilion/

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PROJECT TEAM

Cluster of Excellence IntCDC – Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture, University of Stuttgart

Institute for Computational Design and Construction – Prof. Achim Menges

Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design – Prof. Jan Knippers

Scientific Development:
Marta Gil Pérez, Serban Bodea, Niccolò Dambrosio, Bas Rongen, Christoph Zechmeister
Project Management: Katja Rinderspacher, Marta Gil Pérez, Monika Göbel

Concept Development, System Development, Prototyping:
2018–2020: Talal Ammouri, Vanessa Costalonga Martins, Sacha Joseph Cutajar, Edith Anahi Gonzalez San Martin, Yanan Guo, James Hayward, Silvana Herrera, Jeongwoo Jang, Nicolas Kubail Kalousdian, Simon Jacob Lut, Eda Özdemir, Gabriel Rihaczek, Anke Kristina Schramm, Lasath Ryan Siriwardena, Vaia Tsiokou, Christo van der Hoven, Shu Chuan Yao

2018-2019: Karen Andrea Antorveza Paez, Okan Basnak, Guillaume Caussarieu, Zhetao Dong, Kurt Drachenberg, Roxana Firorella Guillen Hurtado, Ridvan Kahraman, Dilara Karademir, Laura Kiesewetter, Grzegorz Łochnicki, Francesco Milano, Yue Qi, Hooman Salyani, Nasim Sehat, Tim Stark, Zi Jie, Jake Tan, Irina Voineag

Facade Development: Tim Stark

With support of: Okan Basnak, Yanan Guo, Axel Körner

Student assistance: Matthew Johnson, Daniel Locatelli, Francesca Maisto, Mahdieh Hadian Rasanani, Lorin Samija, Anand Shah, Lena Strobel, Max Zorn

FibR GmbH, Stuttgart
Moritz Dörstelmann, Ondrej Kyjanek, Philipp Essers, Philipp Gülke
with support of: Erik Zanetti, Elpiza Kolo, Prateek Bajpai, Hooman Salyani, Jamiel Abubaker, Julian Fial, Sergio Maggiulli, Mansour Ba, Christo van der Hoven

A joint project of the Clusters of Excellence livMatS, University of Freiburg (Prof. Dr. Thomas Speck, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rühe,) and IntCDC, University of Stuttgart

PROJECT SUPPORT

Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt
Exolon Group GmbH