SolarChip

How con­crete fa­cades can be used as en­er­gy-gen­er­at­ing
so­lar col­lec­tors

Bau Kunst Erfn­den is col­lab­o­rat­ing on a new sys­tem called So­larChip with the Helmholtz-Zen­trum Ber­lin für Ma­te­rialien und En­ergie and a con­sor­ti­um of six part­n­ers from in­dus­try. In­no­va­tive façade el­e­ments are bee­ing de­vel­oped that can ac­com­mo­date so­lar el­e­ments of any type or gen­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing fu­ture gen­er­a­tions that have yet to be de­vel­oped.

TERA X | Braided Wood

Tech­ni­cal ra­dial braid­ing of solid wood struc­tures

From Ju­ly 2021, BAU KUNST ERFIN­D­EN and the In­sti­tute of Ma­te­rials Sci­ence at Hof Uni­ver­si­ty of Ap­plied Sci­ences will co­op­er­ate in the TERA X | Braid­ed Wood pro­ject. The aim of the pro­ject is to de­vel­op tubu­lar solid wood braids as tex­tile se­mi-fin­ished prod­ucts for ar­chi­tec­ture and con­struc­tion. Our cont­in­u­ous fil­a­ment of solid wood meets in­dus­trial braid­ing robots. The pro­ject is fund­ed within the frame­work of the Forschungsini­tia­tive Zukunft Bau by the Fed­er­al In­sti­tute for Re­search on Build­ing, Ur­ban Af­fairs and Spa­tial Plan­n­ing´of the Fed­er­al Min­istry of the In­te­ri­or, Build­ing and Com­mu­ni­ty.

DysCrete/DssCrete

So­lar pow­er from con­crete

Dye-Sen­si­tized So­lar Con­crete is a trans­dis­ci­pli­nary, tran­s­na­tio­n­al re­search pro­ject ded­i­cat­ed to the de­vel­op­ment of a nov­el ful­ly struc­tu­ral­ly in­te­grat­ed pho­toac­tive ma­te­rial for use in ar­chi­tec­ture, in­fras­truc­ture, and de­sign. Based on the tech­nol­o­gy of a dye-sen­si­tized so­lar cell, this ma­te­rial us­es or­gan­ic dyes on con­crete to ab­sorb light and pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty through elec­tro­chem­i­cal re­ac­tions.

PLOTBOT/CRAWLER

Façade Robot

The goal of the PLOT­BOT/CRAWLER re­search pro­ject is to de­vel­op a web-based, sen­sor-guid­ed au­to­ma­ton – a mo­bile robot that can be used to func­tio­n­al­ize build­ing sur­faces via the ap­pli­ca­tion of com­plex lay­er sys­tems. Its thor­ough in­te­gra­tion of tool and soft­ware log­ic al­lows it to be guid­ed over the sur­faces of struc­tu­ral el­e­ments in re­al time, re­gard­less of ge­ome­try, or di­rect­ed to fol­low a pre­pro­grammed pat­tern.

FLIGNUM

Turn solid wood in­to a cont­in­u­ous fiber

To pro­duce solid wood mono­fil­a­ments and give them dif­fer­ent and pre­cise cross-sec­tions, we adapt pro­cess­es for ma­chin­ing the width and thick­ness and for join­ing wood. The chal­lenge here is the ma­chin­ing of very small cross-sec­tions. The small­er the work­piece, the greater the na­t­u­ral ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties of the na­t­u­ral ma­te­rial and the idiosyn­crasy of its fi­bre struc­ture.

TETHOK | Textile Tectonics for Wood Construction

Wood be­comes tex­tile

BAU KUNST ERFIN­D­EN ini­ti­ates the trans­dis­ci­pli­nary re­search net­work TETHOK | Tex­tile Tec­ton­ics for Wood Con­struc­tion with a to­tal of 7 de­part­ments at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kas­sel. The group de­vel­ops tex­tile tec­ton­ics for wood con­struc­tion. We in­vesti­gate the de­sign, shap­ing, si­m­u­la­tion, man­u­fac­ture, and con­struc­tion of lightweight load-bear­ing struc­tu­ral com­po­nents made of wood-based cont­in­u­ous-fiber tex­tiles.

POLA

Para­met­ri­cal­ly Op­ti­mized Lightweight Acous­tic Ab­sor­ber

The PO­LA re­search pro­ject cen­ters on the de­vel­op­ment of a new sys­tem for the at­ten­u­a­tion of low-mi­drange and bass fre­quen­cies, fea­tur­ing lightweight uni­tized con­struc­tion cus­tomiz­able to any in­door or out­door lo­ca­tion.

NOISE CONTROL / SOUNDING SURFACES

By im­ple­ment­ing Sound Con­trol/ Sound Lis­ten­ing - a trans­dis­ci­pli­nary area of re­search - we add another per­cep­tu­al per­spec­tive to the re­search plat­form BUILD­ING ART IN­VEN­TION. On­go­ing re­search fo­cus­es on the de­vel­op­ment of a nov­el tech­nique of sound re­duc­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­gards to bass fre­quen­cies, a sys­tem for public space that can be used in­side as well as out­side.

SALIX REGIONALIS 3D

WO­VEN WOOD

SAL­IX RE­GIO­N­ALIS 3D is a re­search and de­vel­op­ment pro­ject that seeks to turn flex­i­ble strips of wood in­to wo­ven lat­tices op­ti­mized for use as 3D mold­ed sur­faces. Pro­ject fund­ing is pro­vid­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­a­tion of In­dus­trial Re­search As­so­ci­a­tions.

JOYN MACHINE

A RAPID MAN­U­FAC­TUR­ING JOIN­ERY MA­CHINE

With sup­port from the Ger­man Fed­er­a­tion of In­dus­trial Re­search As­so­ci­a­tions, Build­ing Art In­ven­tion has launched a new re­search and de­sign pro­ject to de­vel­op an in­no­va­tive web-aug­ment­ed ma­chine for the pro­duc­tion of cus­tom wood con­struc­tions with milled joints. An easy-to-use all-in-one ma­chine, a stan­dardized join­ery sys­tem, an app-based in­ter­face, and an on­line plat­form for the exchange and eval­u­a­tion of de­signs are com­bined to cre­ate a new kind of tool. Estab­lished wood­work­ing meth­ods, in­clud­ing in­dus­trial-scale pro­cess­es, are refined and brought to­gether in an in­tel­li­gent sys­tem that is flex­i­ble and us­er-friend­ly. Us­ing a log­i­cal­ly in­ter­linked sys­tem of tools and ma­te­rials, dig­i­tal de­signs can be turned in­to com­po­nents that are then as­sem­bled in­to ob­jects and struc­tures.

Magnetic Patterning Of Concrete

Na­t­u­ral forces as trans­for­ma­tive pro­cess­es on sur­faces

The MAG­NET­IC PAT­TERN­ING OF CON­CRETE pro­ject ex­plores pos­si­bil­i­ties and strate­gies for the use of mag­net­ic fields to struc­ture and de­sign sur­faces and ma­te­rials. Here we find two op­pos­ing ap­proach­es: the se­lec­tive po­si­tion­ing of in­di­vi­d­u­al par­ti­cles and the sys­te­m­at­ic gen­er­a­tion of par­ti­cle fields.

Local Resources –– New Materials

co­op­er­a­tion pro­ject with the Ger­man
Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy in Oman (GUtech)

The pro­ject "Lo­cal Re­sources – New Ma­te­rials" fund­ed by the Ger­man Aca­dem­ic Exchange Ser­vice DAAD fo­cus­es on the re­ac­ti­va­tion and evo­lu­tion of the knowl­edge of the use of tra­di­tio­n­al build­ing ma­te­rials in Oman.

BlingCrete

Light Re­flect­ing Con­crete

BlingCrete rep­re­sents a new genre of ma­te­rials with its own log­ic of ef­fect. BlingCrete com­bines the pos­i­tive char­ac­teris­tics of con­crete (fire safe­ty, so­lid­i­ty, build­ing meth­ods) with those of retrore­flec­tion. Retrore­flect­ing sur­faces send in­com­ing rays of light (sun­light or ar­ti­fi­cial light) back pre­cise­ly in the di­rec­tion of the source. This op­ti­cal pheno­menon is pro­duced by embed­d­ing glass mi­cro­spheres in the sub­s­trate ma­te­rial. The BlingCrete sur­face is ac­ti­vat­ed de­pend­ing on the po­si­tion of sur­face, light source and re­cipi­ent. The con­crete changes from a pas­sive to an ac­tive state. BlingCrete cre­ates im­mer­sive en­vi­ron­ments by low-tech ana­logue modes.

IM-PORT//EX-PORT

A Float­ing Plat­form for Art and Sci­ence

A de­com­mis­sioned ship, which was re­tired af­ter 40 years of pas­sen­ger ves­sel ser­vice, will be trans­formed in­to the MS IM-PORT//EX-PORT, a trans­dis­ci­pli­nary plat­form for art an sci­ence on the riv­er Ful­da. The ship of­fers a unique set of ameni­ties at a river­side site in the cen­ter of Kas­sel. Dur­ing dOC­U­MEN­TA(13), it will pro­vide a unique in­ter­face be­tween the uni­ver­si­ty, its art school, the ci­ty of Kas­sel and the in­ter­na­tio­n­al public.

DIY lab

Re­search and pro­to­typ­ing lab­o­ra­to­ries

The DIY labs are re­search and pro­to­typ­ing lab­o­ra­to­ries shared by both stu­dents and aca­dem­ic staff. It pro­vides an in­ter­face be­tween re­search, teach­ing and artis­tic ex­per­i­men­ta­tion. The goal is to de­vel­op al­ter­na­tive ways of solv­ing problems of all kinds. High-tech/low-bud­get machines are bee­ing built, f.e. a so­lar cell, a CNC milling mashine, a RepRap open-source 3-D prin­t­er.

SOUND lab

NOISE CON­TROL / SOUND­ING SUR­FACES

The SOUND lab is shared by both stu­dents and aca­dem­ic staff for the ex­plo­ra­tion of son­ic pheno­m­e­na and their au­di­tive per­cep­tion. It is in use for the re­search pro­ject Noise Con­trol/Sound­ing Sur­faces. Ad­di­tio­n­al­ly the SOUND lab can be used for free ex­per­i­men­ta­tion with sound in the con­text of teach­ing and artis­tic work. The SOUND lab f.e. pro­vides pro­fes­sio­n­al au­dio mon­i­tor­ing, mo­bile re­cord­ing equip­ment, mi­cro­phones and mea­sur­ing in­stru­ments.

HOT lab

Wood-Tex­tile Lab­o­ra­to­ry

In the HOT lab we re­search tex­tiles made of solid wood. The cont­in­u­ous fil­a­ment made of solid wood is de­vel­oped here. We de­sign pro­cess­ing equip­ment for wood thread pro­duc­tion and fin­ish­ing and build dob­by and jac­quard weav­ing pro­cess­es adapt­ed to the wood thread with a weav­ing width of 80 cm and any length. The HOT Lab re­search­es the in­ter­ac­tion of de­sign-form­ing in­flu­enc­ing vari­ables of the wood thread and wood thread fab­rics. The in­ter­re­la­tion­ships be­tween the tech­ni­cal fac­tors of pro­duc­tion and pro­cess­ing as well as the tech­ni­cal and aes­thet­ic func­tions of ma­te­rial and form are in­vesti­gat­ed. The HOT lab re­search­es the oc­cur­rence of the raw ma­te­rial wil­low wood in Eu­rope.

Concrete Composites

Co­op­er­a­tion of the Acade­my of Me­dia Arts Cologne (KHM) with BAU KUNST ERFIN­D­EN

Headspace

Co­op­er­a­tion of the Acade­my of Me­dia Arts Cologne (KHM) with BAU KUNST ERFIN­D­EN

SALON UNIVERSITAS –
Art Science Conversations

The SA­LON UNI­VER­SI­TAS hosts artists, sci­en­tists, writ­ers and cu­ra­tors. We aim to estab­lish sti­m­u­lat­ing dia­logue around chang­ing themes, lead­ing to a pro­duc­tive net­work of in­ter­est­ed in­di­vi­d­u­als with an eye to fa­cil­i­tat­ing art/sci­ence col­lab­o­ra­tion.

CONTESS 2020

Congress of the Eu­ro­pean Tex­tile Acade­my in co­op­er­a­tion with the TEX­TILE-AR­CHI­TEC­TURE net­work

VOTO

Wo­ven wil­low fil­a­ment-re­in­forced plas­tic with vari­able fab­ric den­si­ty for façade el­e­ments in tex­tile tim­ber con­struc­tion

BAU KUNST ERFIN­D­EN and the De­part­ment of Plas­tics Tech­nol­o­gy at the In­sti­tute of Ma­te­rials Tech­nol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kas­sel are co­op­er­at­ing in the VO­TO re­search pro­ject. The aim of the re­search pro­ject is to de­vel­op a com­posite ma­te­rial con­sist­ing of a ther­mo­plas­tic ma­trix and embedd­ed fab­rics made from our solid wood threads. The cen­tral com­po­nent of the re­search the opac­i­ty of the façade ma­te­rial de­pend­ing on the fab­ric den­si­ty and the plas­tic, and the ma­te­rial de­vel­op­ment and char­ac­teri­sa­tion of the ma­te­rial.