Another Logic in Architectural Design and Fabrication - Lessons From The Living Prototypes Project

This paper argues for the transformative potential of biomaterials in architecture and highlights the need to recognize their impact on professional practice. Insights are drawn from an 18-month European research project involving three teams of academic and industry partners. The project aimed to scale up cutting-edge technologies in 3D-printed earth, flax-fiber winding, and biopolymer printing, exploring the potential and challenges of natural and biobased recycled materials combined with digital fabrication techniques. The project culminated in a 1:1 scale prototype of a living space, digitally fabricated and exhibited at the Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin. The evaluation of the process and result shows how the strong material behaviour, temporality and heterogeneity of biomaterials required the teams to radically rethink processes of fabrication, assembly, tolerances, and joints between material systems as well, as the materials malleability provided opportunities for adaptation and caretaking. The project demonstrates the importance of digital techniques in the design and fabrication of biobased materials, including additive manufacturing, sensing, data collection, and machine learning. The paper identifies detailed lessons and practice-based methods for the shift towards natural, biodegradable, and recyclable materials- These call to rethink standardisation in the building industry, as digital technologies provide means to adapt design and fabrication to the heterogeneities of biomaterials and challenge the current practice of optimisation for minimal material usage in design as resource-efficient use of biomaterials needs to include more complex considerations of local ecology, the speed of natural growth and processing, dynamic environmental conditions, agricultural policies and cultures.