The aim of the MuD SAL­IX AFS is the estab­lish­ment and sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion of suit­able wil­low types with spe­cif­ic ma­te­rial and growth char­ac­teris­tics in mul­ti­func­tio­n­al agro­forestry sys­tems (AFS). The wil­low serves us as a high-qual­i­ty raw ma­te­rial in two ways: The wil­low wood is used for fur­ther pro­cess­ing to make end­less wil­low wood thread and wil­low wood tex­tile. Sal­i­cy­lates for medicine and cos­met­ics are ex­tract­ed from the wil­low bark. The en­tire val­ue chain of wil­low wood is anal­ysed: for each ac­tor from cul­ti­va­tion to the high­ly refined prod­uct, tak­ing in­to ac­count and eval­u­at­ing soil, cli­mate, wa­ter bal­ance and bio­di­ver­si­ty-pro­mot­ing mea­sures.

The ma­te­rials mould­ed ply­wood and mould­ed lam­i­nat­ed tim­ber were de­vel­oped in the 19th cen­tu­ry as a cost-ef­fec­tive sub­sti­tute for solid wood prod­ucts. This changed at the be­gin­n­ing of the 20th cen­tu­ry, when the po­ten­tial of the lightweight con­struc­tion ma­te­rial for the pro­duc­tion of mould­ed parts through to air­craft fuse­lages in mono­coque con­struc­tion was recog­nised and fur­ther de­vel­oped in­to a high-tech ma­te­rial.

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. The sun is al­ready an im­por­tant source of en­er­gy and pho­to­vol­taics will be­come one of the most im­por­tant pow­er sup­p­ly tech­nolo­gies in the fu­ture. Build­ings play an im­por­tant role in this. They in­creas­ing­ly in­ter­act with the en­er­gy sys­tem and have the po­ten­tial to be­come de­cen­tral­ized en­er­gy cen­ters.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.