‘Materials as a Design Tool’ Design Philosophy Applied in Three Innovative Research Pavilions Out of Sustainable Building Materials with Controlled End-Of-Life Scenarios

Abstract

Choosing building materials is usually the stage that follows design in the architectural design process, and is rarely used as a main input and driver for the design of the whole building’s geometries or structures. As an approach to have control over the environmental impact of the applied building materials and their after-use scenarios, an approach has been initiated by the author through a series of research studies, architectural built prototypes, and green material developments. This paper illustrates how sustainable building materials can be a main input in the design process, and how digital fabrication technologies can enable variable controlling strategies over the green materials’ properties, enabling adjustable innovative building spaces with new architectural typologies, aesthetic values, and controlled martial life cycles. Through this, a new type of design philosophy by means of applying sustainable building materials with closed life cycles is created. In this paper, three case studies of research pavilions are illustrated. The pavilions were prefabricated and constructed from newly developed sustainable building materials. The applied materials varied between structural and non-structural building materials, where each had a controlled end-of-life scenario. The application of the bio-based building materials was set as an initial design phase, and the architects here participated within two disciplines: once as designers, and additionally as green building material developers. In all three case studies, Design for Deconstruction (DfD) strategies were applied in different manners, encouraging architects to further follow such suggested approaches.

Structural Optimization through Biomimetic-Inspired Material-Specific Application of Plant-Based Natural Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites (NFRP) for Future Sustainable Lightweight Architecture

“…The project started following the design philosophy: “Materials as a Design Tool” [ 19 ] combined with a synthesis of primarily inductive and partially deductive methodology. The aim was to further investigate the applicability of Tailored Fiber Placement in the field of architecture and how the material-appropriate application of NFRP can contribute to structural optimization and increase the sustainability level as once indicated using another material development in architecture from the same BioMat group [ 11 ].…”

Smart Materiality in Architectural Assemblies

“…Materials selection in architecture has been chosen for the pragmatic aspect without considering all properties of used materials, in recent years the material dimension is explored which resulted in new enhanced products that further use the material properties (Krieg et al, 2015;Li et al, 2018;Velasco et al, 2015). Integrating the digital paradigm into construction and design has led research to further investigate the material dimension for optimized performance (Chang et al, 2019;Dahy, 2019;Decker, 2013;Velasco et al, 2015). The merge between material, design, construction, fabrication and data formed a new paradigm identified as Digital Materiality (Willmann et al, 2013).…”

An Analysis of Eco-Technology Allowing Water and Energy Saving in an Environmentally Friendly House—A Case Study from Poland

“…Regardless of the names, the main purpose of using such structures is the same-the reduction of the negative impact of buildings on the environment and an increase of comfort and quality of life [36]. This applies to both materials used to make a building and installations a building will be equipped with [37]. An interesting approach to provide sustainable buildings through using low-energetic household appliances was also shown in reference [38].…”