Living Prototypes - Digital Fabrication With Biomaterials

The exhibition presents an exceptional research project on digital fabrication in building with bio-based materials. Full-scale prototypes make this exciting field in architecture understandable and ‘touchable’, while also demonstrating a living space designed by merging the innovative approaches of three research teams. What might our homes look and feel like if they were built without using fossil fuels? What if advanced research into bio-based building materials could change architectural design and building construction? How can architectural prototypes communicate knowledge about resource-conscious design and construction processes? These questions are at the core of the Living Prototypes exhibition.

The digitally fabricated prototypes for building components, made with the bio-based materials earth, flax fibre and bioplastics, were developed in a European research project, instigated and guided by ANCB The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory and funded by the Zukunft Bau programme of the German Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building. Over the course of 18 months, three university institutes – CITA from the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, ITKE from the University of Stuttgart and IAAC, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona – collaborated with industry partners COBOD from Copenhagen, FibR from Kernen and WASP from Massa Lombarda.