Wood is becoming increasingly popular as a sustainable building material. At the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern (TUK), the team led by Assistant Professor Dr Christopher Robeller has developed software that calculates how, for example, complex wooden building parts can best be assembled from individual parts, similar to a puzzle. A milling machine manufactures the parts according to these specifications. They only have to be assembled afterwards. What is special: Only wood is used, also connecting elements are made of natural material. This is how the researchers recently built a dome. Construction companies could use the technology by means of apps to build quickly and sustainably.

Wie lassen sich negative Auswirkungen von Baustellen in Innenstädten reduzieren? Mit diesem Thema hat sich Prof. Dr. Benjamin Bierwirth von der Hochschule RheinMain im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts „Construction Impact Guide“ (CIG) beschäftigt und ein Wirkmodell entwickelt.

NSF advisory committee assesses ongoing transformation of our increasingly urban planet

Better thermal insulation means lower heating costs - but this should not be at the expense of exciting architecture. A new type of brick filled with aerogel could make thin and highly insulating walls possible in the future - without any additional insulation layer.

Materials scientists of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, develop smart windows for controlled shading and solar thermal energy harvesting

The Cooperative Research Project FLEX-G started on June 1, 2017 under the federal construction technology initiative named ENERGIEWENDEBAUEN funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (FR 03ET1470A). The main goal of the research project is to investigate technologies for the manufacturing of translucent and transparent membrane roof and façade elements with integrated optoelectronic components. The focus lies on a switchable total energy transmittance (often referred to as the solar factor or solar heat gain and “g-value” in Europe) and on flexible solar cell integration to significantly contribute to both energy saving and power generation in buildings.

Researchers from the National Research Programme "Resource Wood" have developed a type of concrete that largely consists of wood. The building material offers the construction industry new possibilities and is based in large part on renewable resources.

It takes large thermal storage tanks to heat apartment buildings highly efficiently. To install them, they have to fit through standard door openings in existing buildings. The BINE Projektinfo 3/2017 “Large storage tank developed for small spaces” introduces a model that makes this easy. It consists of multiple modules and has lower heat losses than the cascade storage systems previously used.

The EU project “LISTEN” creates a robust, hands-free speech control interface for smart home systems. During the recent project review meeting, the partners from Germany, Greece, and Italy demonstrated a real-time, matchbox-size, smart-home-specific natural voice interface to web services. “LISTEN” bridges the gap between microphone array networks, signal processing and speech recognition.

Among the general public, solar thermal energy is currently associated with dark blue, rectangular collectors on building roofs. Technologies are needed for aesthetically high quality architecture which offer the architect more room for manoeuvre when it comes to low- and plus-energy buildings. With the “ArKol” project, researchers at Fraunhofer ISE together with partners are currently developing two façade collectors for solar thermal energy generation, which permit a high degree of design flexibility: a strip collector for opaque façade sections and a solar thermal blind for transparent sections. The current state of the two developments will be presented at the BAU 2017 trade fair.