Architecture and Adaptive Buildings

Due to a rapidly growing world population and rapid urbanization, urban buildings will be needed for 2.6 billion people in the next 35 years - a huge demand that will be accompanied by immense consumption of energy and resources as well as serious environmental consequences. However, productivity in conventional construction has been stagnant for decades. New approaches to future planning and building are urgently needed.

These challenges, and thus the prerequisites for a quality-oriented, livable, socially just, and sustainably built environment, are at the heart of the Architecture and Adaptive Building Profile Area at the University of Stuttgart.

The Profile Area’s flagship is the Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture” (IntCDC), which is funded within the framework of the Excellence Strategy for strengthening top-level research in Germany. The Cluster of Excellence intends to rethink planning and building as well as exploit the full potential of digital technologies in order to create the foundation for groundbreaking innovations and sustainable planning and building.

Two pavilions that thrilled an audience of millions at the Federal Horticulture Show in Heilbronn in 2019 are world-renowned hallmarks of this new way of thinking: a seven-meter-high, extremely material-efficient wooden structure that spans a base area of 500 square meters without supports, and a transparent dome made of glass and carbon fibers - the first building system ever that was developed digitally throughout. Findings from the Collaborative Research Center SFB 1244 (“Adaptive Skins and Structures for the Built Environment of Tomorrow”) of the German Research Foundation are also included in the research. Currently, this SFB is building the world’s first adaptive high-rise, which will be a part of the 2027 International Building Exhibition (IBA).