Smart Oman

MU­S­CAT To ex­p­lo­re lo­cal­ly availab­le buil­ding ma­te­rials and tech­no­lo­gies a jo­int Oma­ni-Ger­man work­shop en­tit­led “Lo­cal Re­sour­ces – New Ma­te­rials” will be held at the Ger­man Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­no­lo­gy in Oman (GU­tech) next week. The work­shop will be held in co­ope­ra­ti­on with Prof. Hei­ke Kluss­mann, Head of the De­part­ment of Fi­ne Arts of the Uni­ver­si­ty Kas­sel (Ger­ma­ny) and Asst. Prof. Da­nie­la Ott­mann of the De­part­ment of Ar­chi­tec­tu­re and Ur­ban Plan­ning at GU­tech and will be the be­gin­ning of a th­ree year jo­int Ger­man-Oma­ni re­se­arch pro­ject, fun­ded by the Ger­man Aca­de­mic Ex­chan­ge Ser­vice (DAAD). “The main mis­si­on of the re­se­arch is to ex­p­lo­re and ex­pe­ri­ment with lo­cal­ly availab­le tra­di­tio­nal ma­te­rials and tech­no­lo­gies in or­der to in­vent 'new ma­te­rials' to meet the needs of a su­s­tainab­le built en­viron­ment of the pre­sent and fu­tu­re,” said Da­nie­la Ott­mann.

As a start-off ses­si­on of the jo­int re­se­arch pro­ject Prof. Hei­ke Kluss­mann, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kas­sel and her team of the practi­ce-ba­sed wor­king-con­cept plat­form 'BAU KUNST ER­FIN­DEN' (Buil­ding/ Art/ In­ven­ting) will be con­duc­ting two in­tro­duc­ti­on work­shops for GU­tech stu­dents. In­struc­tors and stu­dents will work to­ge­ther to find so­lu­ti­ons on how to deal with art and tech­no­lo­gy. One work­shop will be con­duc­ted by for­mer BMW con­cept car de­sig­ner Klau­dia Kru­se who will pro­du­ce not on­ly prints on fa­bric ba­sed on the stu­dents own de­signs but al­so con­struct the sc­re­ens for the prints them­sel­ves. The other work­shop will be ba­sed on the con­cepts “the do it your­self” and “ma­king is kno­wing”. Stu­dents will build their own so­lar cell, ba­sed on Pro­fes­sor Mi­cha­el Graet­zel's in­ven­ti­on of a dye-sen­si­ti­zed so­lar cell imi­ta­ting the pho­to­syn­the­sis pro­cess.