JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #136 - September/October 2020 - 40

FEATURE
construction

Biocomposites and automation:
a sustainable future for the building industry

Jun.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hanaa Dahy
Department Director
Piotr Baszyński,
Research Associate
BioMat/ITKE, University of Stuttgart

T

he construction industry, both in
Europe and globally, confronts us
with many challenges.
This sector is responsible for the highest
consumption of energy and aggregate
materials. Stimulating a shift from the
demand for non-recyclable materials such
as concrete - the production of which
is predominantly responsible for more
than half of the global CO2 emissions - to
construction materials based on annually
renewable resources is the fundamental
purpose that underlies the activities of
BioMat.
Construction industry challenges
The aspects that distinguish construction
from other industries are the scale of work,
the uniqueness of each project in terms of
its predefining conditions such as location,
immobility and function, which practically
prevent possibilities of prototyping at the
1:1 level. These preconditions slow down
the introduction of innovative solutions.
On the other hand, the construction industry is a phenomenal testing ground on
which various technologies, already proven in other fields, can be verified at a bigger
scale. For this reason, BioMat cooperates
closely with experts from other branches,
such as aircraft design and composite
material developers, to seek innovative

40

BioMat/ITKE tackles problems of the contemporary building
sector by leading research in the area of bio-based materials
and their automatized application in architecture. Their 1:1
architectural demonstrators illustrate paths along which
innovation can be transferred to the construction industry.

technologies that, once transplanted into
the construction industry, could offer new
solutions to already highlighted problems.
A holistic approach to
biocomposite architectural design
Biobased Materials and Materials Cycles
in Architecture (BioMat) at ITKE,
University of Stuttgart, is one of the rare academic departments combining bio-based
materials knowledge in the building sector
and computational design with diverse
fabrication techniques. It has the mission
to examine different sustainability aspects
in architecture. Its particular strength is
multidisciplinary work based on a strong
material development experience, particularly in the area of biocomposite materials
from annually renewable resources, and
parametric architectural design compe-

jec composites magazine / N°136 September - October 2020

tence combined with digital fabrication
experience. BioMat leads diverse research
and industrial projects in the areas of
sustainability, biocomposites and digital
fabrication and owns diverse patents in the
field of biocomposites.
Within the scope of these research project,
various fabrication techniques for natural
fibre-reinforced polymers were explored
to develop architectural products and
design concepts. In every project, the
design proposals were not developed as
single end-products, but considered as
one of the stages in a total lifecycle of the
material, starting from sourcing the raw
material from annually renewable resources, through design applications developed
with consideration of a design-to-demolition policy, ending at material recycling
possibilities.

Fig. 1: General view
of the Biocomposite
Pavilion 2018
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #136 - September/October 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #136 - September/October 2020
