Public Lectures
earth. bio-based. reused
Next public lecture:
Dr. Olga Beatrice Carcassi
MYCELIUM-BASED BIOCOMPOSITES
Wednesday 10.04.24
16h-17h (UTC+2)
external pageLink for the lecture
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Dr. Olga Beatrice Carcassi is a Research Scientist at the Natural Materials of Columbia GSAPP University.
Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ABC Department of Politecnico di Milano, where she also obtained her Ph.D.
Passionate about regenerative and low-carbon technologies, her work concentrates on the definition 3D printed light fiber-clay materials.
She will present her work on the advanced fabrication and LCA methodologies of mycelium-based composites to reach the climate-neutrality for the building and construction sector.
Next panel discussion:
CLIMATE POSITIVE CONSTRUCTION
Scaling-up Bio-Based Construction
Friday12.04.24
14h-17h (UTC+2)
DownloadPOSTER (PDF, 112 KB)
external pagePlease register here to join us in person (Kulturpark, Zurich) or attend online.
CLIMATE POSITIVE CONSTRUCTION FRIDAYS ARE A SERIES OF EVENTS TO ACCELERATE THE NECESSARY TURNAROUND IN THE CONSTRUCTION SECTOR. URGENCY IS DEMANDING ACTION TODAY.
For this 3rd edition four guest will introduce their point of view and discuss.
Special guest: Dirk Scharmer, Co-Founder of FASBA, Association for Strawbale Construction in Germany, will give insights to the history and news on laying out basis for straw constructions.
Three complementary guests, will enrich the discussion and help examine different attitudes and approaches:
Andrea Akchoti, Communication & Legal at Structura C, a consulting and distribution company for hemp lime products.
Bjorn Kierulf, CEO of Ecococon ready to scale-up straw prefab constructions in an industrialised way.
Prof. Dr. Guillaume Habert, Head of the Chair of Sustainable Construction at ETHZ.
Moderators: Dr. Arnaud Evrard (ETH Zürich), Fabian Hörmann (The Real Deal, YR22).
New video:
Prof. Christof Ziegert
NEW DEVELOPMENTS ON EARTHEN PRODUCT REGULATIONS
Monday 04.03.2024
16h-17h (UTC+1)
external pageRecording of the lecture
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Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christof Ziegert is a bricklayer and civil engineer, co-founder of ZRS – Architekten Ingenieure in Berlin.
He completed his doctorate at the Technical University of Berlin after several years of professional experience in the field of damage and renovation of historic solid earth constructions.
The focus of his professional activities today is the planning and assessment of earthen buildings in Germany and abroad.
He is currently chairman of ICOMOS-ISCAE and Honorary professor at the FH Potsdam.
He also a publicly appointed and sworn expert for "Damage in earthen buildings" by the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce, board member of the German earth building organization and chairman of the earth building standards committee at the German Standard Institute.
He will present the recent developments on earthen product regulations in Germany.
CLIMATE POSITIVE CONSTRUCTION
Scaling-up Earth Construction
Friday 08.03.2024
13h30-16h30 (UTC+1)
DownloadPOSTER (PDF, 218 KB)
CLIMATE POSITIVE CONSTRUCTION FRIDAYS ARE A SERIES OF EVENTS TO ACCELERATE THE NECESSARY TURNAROUND IN THE CONSTRUCTION SECTOR. URGENCY IS DEMANDING ACTION TODAY.
For this second edition, we wish to focus on “Scaling up Earth Construction”.
We have the pleasure to host a special guest:
• Bettina Baggenstos: specialized in timber construction. She works at Blumer Lehmann and manages the on-site earth construction of the Hortus office building.
Two complementary guests, who contributed to this Module, will be participating to enrich the discussion and help examine different attitudes towards earth as construction:
• Jonathan Ensslin, Lead of Construction & Application at Oxara
• Ulrich Röhlen, Technical Director at Claytec
New video:
Fabian Hörmann
THE REAL DEAL – Post-Fossil Construction for Game Changers
Friday 02.02.2024
11h-12h (UTC+1)
external pageRecording of the lecture
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Fabian Hörmann is an architect and musician. He studied architecture in Stuttgart and Las Palmas. After working in film, media and architecture in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, he became, from 2009-2022, associate, member of the management and head of the design and competition department at the architecture firm EM2N. In 2022, he founded YR22 regenerative architecture + urbanism in Zurich. He is also teaches at FHNW in Basel and at HFT in Stuttgart.
Fabian Hörmann participated in the CAS ETH Regenerative Materials – Essentials in 2021 and decided to extend his commitment by launching the multi-media project “The Real Deal – Post-Fossil Construction for Game Changers” to convince decision makers from real estate, finance and politics on different channels.
He will explain the process and content of the book which was recently published with RUBY PRESS and the upcoming activities.
New video:
Christophe Aubertin
ARCHITECTURE OF RESOURCES: KNOW-HOW AND TERRITORY
Tuesday 30.01.2024
15h30-16h30 (UTC+1)
external pageRecording of the lecture
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Christophe Aubertin is Architect. He studied in ENSA Nancy where he is teaching now. His architectural practice takes mainly part in the collective office Studiolada, he co-founded in 2009. He received many distinctions for his projects, each reaching new benchmarks for sustainability. As a matter of fact, he also studied in the School for timber technologies and industries ENSTIB in France, allowing him to design high quality timber structures with a rational use of resources. The collective process of his design is fascinating, and the projects are very much appreciated by the users.
He will present some of his projects and explain how his practice is evolving to face our world in transition.
Prof. Joseph Little
HYGROTHERMAL RISK ASSESSMENT
Monday 06.11.2023
17h-18h (UTC +1)
external pageRecording of the lecture
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Prof. Joseph Little is the Head of Building Performance and Construction in the School of Architecture, Building and Environment, TU Dublin. He is the manager of School programmes relating to construction and building performance, and programme chair of MSc in Building Performance (Energy Efficiency in Design). He researches and lectures in hygrothermal risk assessment and energy efficiency of historic dwellings. Little is a director and founder member of the Irish Green Building Council and a member of the National Scientific Committee on Energy Efficiency, Sustainability and Climate Change in ICOMOS. He is also the Irish co-operation partner of the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics in relation to training and development of the WUFI suite of hygrothermal evaluation software.
Prof. Joseph Little presented his work and some challenges we face in this field in Ireland and elsewhere.
Sébastien Pittet
INNOVATIVE BUILDING TECHNIQUES
Monday 02.10.2023
16h30-17h30 (UTC +2)
external pageRecording of the lecture
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The “home” of today and tomorrow must be designed to be in harmony with the planet and its inhabitants, built by people working conscientiously and with concern for defining the best solutions for each scenario. It is essential to have a holistic vision of construction, of life! The subject is so complex, the solutions interconnected and variable from one situation to another that one can only make a multi-criteria choice. But what are these criteria?
To take action, it is essential to detach yourself from the catalog of industrial products and know the possibilities and the techniques that can be used. There are only three parameters left to be used intelligently, one influencing the others but cannot be ruled out: materials, shapes and colours.
Sébastien Pittet will explain the philosophy behind the work of Pittet Artisans and present their work with regenerative materials.
Prof. Lars Junghans
22-26 CONCEPT AND ADAPTATIONS
Monday 11.9.2023
16h30-17h30 (UTC +2)
external pageRecording of the lecture
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Lars Junghans is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. His research is focused on the development of highperformance buildings with a comprehensive view of all aspects of the building’s thermal behavior, including passive design, active strategies and renewable energy systems. His research aims to find holistic optimal solutions for the challenges of buildings in different climate zones.
He received a PhD in building science from ETH Zurich and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. In an intensive collaboration with the Austrian architect Dietmar Eberle, he also developed the energy concept of the award winning 2226 Office Building.
He will be presenting his research and how the 22-26 concept can be adapted in other climates.
Prof. Corentin Fivet
REUSE AND STRUCTURAL APPLICATIONS
Tuesday 9.5.2023
13h30 - 14h30 UTC+2
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Corentin Fivet is Professor of Architecture and Structural Design at EPFL, since 2016. Previously, he worked for two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA. Corentin Fivet holds a Master in Architectural Engineering and a PhD in Engineering Sciences from the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. At EPFL, Corentin Fivet is heading the Structural Xploration Lab to develop environmentally responsible building systems. Bridging the gap between architecture and structural engineering, the lab explores more sustainable implementations of load-bearing materials, new design methods for resource - efficient structural typologies, and exemplary historical practices of structural design.
In this lecture he will talk about reusing building parts, focusing on design processes involving the reuse of load-bearing elements, with case studies from the Structural Xploration Lab.
Prof. Eike Roswag
TRANSFORMING NATURAL BUILDING TRADITION
Wednesday 29.03.2023
16:30 - 17:30 UTC +2
external pageRecording of the lecture
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One of the initiators and directors of ZRS Architekten Ingenieure Berlin and chair of the Natural Building Lab at TU Berlin, for more than 20 years, Eike Roswag has been researching climate and resource adaptive, human architecture in different climatic
zones, which forms the basis for his teaching, design and construction projects. His projects demonstrate a great variety and range from schools out of earth and bamboo in the global south, over heritage rehabilitation project in the Middle East and Europe up to housing, production
buildings and schools out of timber, earth and natural fibre insulation in Europe. His research is focused on climate and cultural
adaptive architecture with a specific emphasis on low-tech building systems. The projects he has worked on were awarded with the Aga Khan Award 2007, KAIROS Europäischer Kulturpreis 2015, Holcim Award 2011, Gold in Asia Pacific and others.
Prof. Roger Boltshauser
BUILDING REGENERATIVE IN EAST-SWITZERLAND
Tuesday 28.02.2023
14:00 - 15:00 UTC+1
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Roger Boltshauser (*1964) graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) in 1995 and founded Boltshauser Architekten AG in Zurich the following year. Currently, a team of around 75 employees works on projects in all phases and a second office was opened in Munich in 2021. For their work, Boltshauser Architekten have received several awards, as in 2022 the ‘DETAIL-Award’ for the Kiln Tower for the Brickworks Museum.
In addition to his practice, he was a teaching at EPF Lausanne, the University of Applied Sciences Chur (HTW), Anhalt University of Applied Sciences (DIA), Chur Institute of Architecture (CIA) as well as at the TU Munich. Since 2018, he is a guest professor at ETH Zurich.
Roger Boltshauser presented the challenges he encounters in his architectural practice in East-Switzerland when using Regenerative Materials.
Prof. Andrea Klinge
CIRCULAR CONSTRUCTION
Thursday 26.01.2023
15:00 - 16:00 UTC+1
external pageRecording of the lecture
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Prof. Andrea Klinge is teaching Circular Construction at the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz FHNW. She is also part of ZRS Architekten Ingenieure, founded in 2003 as an integrated design and engineering partnership in Berlin.
ZRS Architekten Ingenieure have developed their key competency in the use of natural building materials, primarily timber, earth and bamboo. With ambitious clients and partners, their projects aim to promote the innovative usage of local and renewable materials both at home and abroad. Their comprehensive experience of planning and supervising the construction of earth building projects is regularly requested by both other architecture and design offices, as well as construction
firms around the world.
Wednesday 15.06.2022
16:30 - 17:30 UTC+1
Nicolas Coeckelberghs
SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT
external pageRecording of the lecture
Nicolas Coeckelberghs is one of the four co-founders of BC architects & BC studies & BC materials. BC stands for Brussels Cooperation and points to how BC grew - embedded within place and people. It is an award-winning office, and is teaching at KULeuven University (BE), UHasselt University (BE), and has been teaching at EiABC Addis Ababa University (ET), ETH Zurich (CH), TU Stuttgart (DE), TU München (DE). The collaborators work with age-old materials such as loam, straw and natural stone. But what they do with them and how, is radically different. What if a city yard, for example, became the largest harvesting site for building materials? For the firm, the large quantities of soil moved here are the raw material for circular building materials. Nicolas will present to us a sample of their practice, with emphasis on geo-sourcing, bio-sourcing and reuse.
Monday 16.05.2022
16:30 - 17:30 UTC+1
Catherine De Wolf
DIGITAL INNOVATION TOWARDS A CIRCULAR BUILT ENVIRONMENT
external pageRecording of the lecture
As Assistant Professor of Circu-lar Engineering for Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zu-rich), Prof. Catherine De Wolf is conducting research on digital innovation towards a circular built environment. She is the director of the Chair of Circular Engineering for Architecture (CEA). The CEA lab is an interdis-ciplinary team of civil engineers, architects, urbanists, and com-puter scientists who collaborate towards automating the reuse of building materials. Catherine De Wolf is also the founder of De Wolf Environmental Archi-tecture Thinking. A key element in Catherine’s work is ensuring a continuous link between aca-demia and industry. Therefore, she works with real-world examples such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Wednesday 06.04.2022
16:30 - 17:30 UTC+1
Pete Walker
RESEARCH ON BIO-BASED MATERIALS AT U-BATH
external pageRecording of the lecture
Pete Walker joined the University of Bath in 1998. He was promoted to Professor in 2006, and he is currently Director of the research Centre for Innovative Construction Materials. His current research interests include bio-based construction materials, materials for improved indoor air quality, and innovative timber engineering. He focuses on the development of low carbon technologies suitable for new and retrofitting applications. He will present an overview of his work on bio-based construction materials and technologies, including straw bale, hemp-lime, structural use of cork, and the development of circular solutions. Examples of practical applications will also be taken from a range of construction projects.
Monday 04.04.2022
13:30 - 14:30 UTC+1
Anna Heringer
SUSTAINABLE BEAUTY
external pageRecording of the lecture
For Anna Heringer architecture is a tool to improve lives. As an architect and honorary professor of the UNESCO Chair of Earthen Architecture, Building Cultures, and Sustainable Development she is focusing on the use of natural building materials. She has been actively involved in development cooperation in Bangladesh since 1997. Her diploma work, the METI School in Rudrapur got realized in 2005 and won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2007. Over the years, Studio Anna Heringer has realized further projects in Asia, Africa, and Europe. These projects were widely published and exhibited, and have received many prices. Anna is lecturing worldwide at conferences, including TED and has been visiting professor at various universities such as Harvard and ETH Zurich. She will present some of her projects using bio-based materials and explain why for her sustainability is a synonym for beauty.
Friday 04.03.2022
09:00 - 10:00 UTC+1
Mu Jun
MATCHA COMMUNITY CENTER
external pageRecording of the lecture
Prof. Mu Jun is an Architect and the head of Department of Architecture in the School of Architecture, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology. Graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, he has practiced as an architect in several rural sustainable construction projects. His specialty is in Raw Soil Buildings and Sustainable Design Architecture. He will focus on few projects, as the recent Macha village center, and give an overview of what he did in terms of research, practice and education.
Thursday 27.1.2022
16h30-17h30 UTC+1
Pierre Frey
LEARNING FROM VERNACULAR
external pageRecording of the lecture
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Pierre Frey is Honorary professor of EPFL-ENAC. He wrote a great book in 2010 with this title "Learning from vernacular: Towards a new vernacular architecture". He will present a unique collection of models of vernacular architecture he realized with his students at EPFL, highlight the special attributes of these buildings and underline there value. We will then travel with him through selected contemporary realizations by architects from Africa, Asia, America and Europe that seem to him to constitute a "new vernacular architecture".
The emphasis here is on materials available on the fringes of the market, on the safeguarding and development of traditional know-how, on the social role of the architect and on the teaching of architecture.
Tuesday 25.1.2022
16h30-17h30 UTC+1
Dominique Gauzin-Müller
INSPIRING REGENERATIVE MATERIAL ARCHITECTURE
external pageRecording of the lecture
Dominique Gauzin-Müller is a French architect. She is Honorary Professor of the UNESCO Chair “Earthen Architecture, Constructive Cultures and Sustainable Development”, and lecturer in several schools of architecture around the world (Strasbourg, Marrakech, Linz, ETH Zürich). She also initiated and coordinated the TERRA Award (2015/2016), the FIBRA Award (2018/2019), and the TERRAFIBRA Award (2020/2021), the first world prizes for contemporary architecture using earth and bio-based materials. In addition, she co-authored the Manifesto for a Happy Frugality in 2018.
We will travel with her on all the continents to discover the most inspiring examples rewarded by these prizes underlining the link they have with the principles developed in the Manifesto for a Happy Frugality.
29.06.2021
Luis Felipe Lopez
BASE INNOVATION CENTER
Base Innovation Center is a HILTI Foundation Initiative to Elevate Social Housing Standards through Sustainable Construction Technologies. Luis Felipe Lopez currently works as Head of Technology at Base Bahay Foundation (BBF), a Philippine-based organization supported by the HILTI Foundation. BBF uses the Cement Bamboo Frame technology to build affordable social housing projects, since its inception the foundation have built more than 1000 housing units around the country. This work is a great example of how through the engineering practice it is possible to support vulnerable populations, providing them with safe and affordable housing solutions while using regenerative materials.
18.06.2021
Dirk Hebel
BUILDING FROM WASTE
”Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Recover“ is the sustainable guideline that has replaced the ”Take, Make, Waste“ attitude of the industrial age. A practical look into materials and products which use waste as a renewable resource. An inventory of current projects and building elements, ranging from marketed products, among them façade panels made of straw and self-healing concrete, to advanced research and development like newspaper, wood or jeans denim used as isolating fibres. Going beyond the mere recycling aspect of reused materials. How materials usually regarded as waste can be processed into new construction elements?
21.05.2021
Alessio Colombo and Katerina Dimova
THE RICE HOUSE: A GLOBAL APPROACH CASE STUDY
Alessio Colombo is a chartered geologist with more than 20 years of experience. Stimulated by the local territory and the problem created by the rice residues from 2010 he started the experimentation with by-products from the rice production and in 2016 co-founded Ricehouse Srl SB. Alessio is in charge of the R&D processes of the company, product development and the supply chain.
Katerina Dimova is a multi-skilled chartered architect and project manager committed to personal and professional growth for a more sustainable future. She gained multidisciplinary skills in the architectural design, project management with a strong passion for innovation and change, developed in different business contexts. From 2019 Katerina is working in Ricehouse Srl SB as Project Manager.
15.04.2021
Chirstof Ziegert
BEST PRACTICE IN NEW AND RENOVATED EARTHEN BUILDINGS
As a bricklayer and civil engineer, co-founded of ZRS Arch. Ing. in Berlin. He is board member of the German earth building organisation, chairman of the earth building standards committee at the German Standard Institute. Currently chairman of ICOMOS-ISCAE.
04.03.2021
Eike Roswag-Klinge
TRANSFORMING NATURAL BUILDING TRADITION
Dipl.-Ing. Architekt BDA, one of the initiators and directors of ZRS Architekten Ingenieure Berlin und Chair of Natural Building Lab, Technische Universität Berlin. In his networks he is since 20 years researching on, teaching/ learning, designing and building climate and resource adaptive, human architecture in different climate zones. The projects range from schools out of earth and bamboo in the global south, heritage rehabilitation, to housing, production buildings and schools out of timber, earth and natural fibre insulation in Europe. His research is focusing on climate and cultural adaptive architecture and low-tech building systems. The work he is related with got awarded with the Aga Khan Award 2007, KAIROS Europäischer Kulturpreis 2015, Holcim Award 2011, Gold in Asia Pacific and others.
04.03.2021
Andrea Klinge: "Circular Construction"
CIRCULAR CONSTRUCTION
Andrea Klinge, Dipl.-Ing. Architecture, M.Sc. Architecture, Energy & Sustainability, studied at the TU Berlin and London Metropolitan University and specialised in sustainable construction. Having previously worked in different architectural practices in the UK and Berlin, Andrea joined ZRS Architekten in 2013 where she established the research department, leading the EU-research projects [H]house and RE4. Her research focus on the use of natural building materials in light of an improved indoor environment quality but also on circular construction. Due to her background as carpenter, Andrea works also practically to bring research results directly into application. She has implemented several small-scale projects constructed out of timber, earth or bamboo with students from different universities as well as with colleagues. In addition, she is a lecturer and leads sustainability workshops at different universities in Berlin. Because of her experience in earthen construction, Andrea is part of the Classification Committee for the development of Environmental Product Declarations for earthen building products.
01.03.2021
Dominique Gauzin-Müller
INSPIRING REGENERATIVE MATERIALS ARCHITECTURE
A French architect living in Stuttgart, is Honorary Professor of the UNESCO Chair “Earthen Architecture, Constructive Cultures and Sustainable Development”, and lectures in several schools of architecture around the world (Strasbourg, Marrakech, Linz, ETH Zürich). Author of 19 books and curator of several exhibitions on sustainable architecture and urban planning, she collaborates with many international magazines. She was editor-in-chief of the French magazine EcologiK from 2007 to 2016. She belongs to the Compagnie des negawatts, a group of independent experts developing an energy transition strategy. In 2015/2016, she initiated and coordinated the TERRA Award, first world prize for contemporary mud brick architecture, and in 2018/2019 the FIBRA Award, first world prize for contemporary biobased architecture, whose finalists are highlighted in a book and a touring exhibition. We will travel with her on all the continents to discover the most inspiring examples rewarded by these prizes.
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