BIOMAT PAVILION 2020

The Mock-up demonstrates a vision for modular sustainable architecture, where annually-renewable biomaterials are digitally additively-fabricated to produce minimal surface modular units, which are versatile and reusable in diverse geometric constellations.

The mock-up is 2m high, consists of 14 modules and it weighs only 20 kg. The identical modules were assembled into different foam-like lightweight compositions. The modules were fabricated by digitally tailoring natural flax fibers into specific 2D patterns following optimized structural and parametric geometrical deviations. These were later formed in a vacuum-assisted molding process into the final 3D shapes.
This project is a result of 3 months of intensive work including computational architectural design, structural simulations, and optimizations as well as the digital fabrication phases.

The course was provided by BioMat Group at ITKE led by Jun.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Arch. Hanaa Dahy in cooperation with the Institute of Aircraft Design, Faculty 06: aerospace Engineering and Geodesy at University of Stuttgart, led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Middendorf and the Open Mechanics group at Faculty of Civil Engineering at Czech Technical University in Prague lead by Prof. Dr. -Ing. Jan Zeman.

The Mock-up was created in cooperation between architects, engineers, and eight architecture students with the financial support from the University of Stuttgart ( Project Stuttgarter Change Labs), the German Agency for Renewable Resources (FNR e.V.) at BMEL: LeichtPro Project: FKZ 22027018, and from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy EXC 2120/1-390831618 (Research Project 06).

Supervisor: Jun.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Arch. Hanaa Dahy
Tutors: Jan Petrš, Evgenia Spyridonos, Piotr Baszyński supported by Benjamin Grisin (IFB)
Selected design: Paulina Grabowska
Students: Paulina Grabowska, Ene Eduard-George, Jia Qingwen, Kretschmann Maria Elisa, Li Jiaxin, Sadeghi Reza, Cayuela Cánovas José, Elshafie Yousef Mostafa
Fabrication: Institute of Aircraft Design, University of Stuttgart (Faculty 06: Institute of Aircraft Design) – Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Middendorf, Dr. Stefan Carosella, and Mr. Benjamin Grisin
Multiscale structural analysis: Open Mechanics group, Czech Technical University in Prague (Faculty of Civil Engineering: Department of Mechanics ) – Prof. Dr.- Ing. Jan Zeman, Dr. Jan Novák and Mr. Martin Doškář
Technical Support: Michael Preisack, Michael Schneider, Michael Tondera, Andreas Kulla, Finn Kenter, Lisa Schulze, Heiko Sommer