Project description
Building loam walls with 3D natural fibre reinforcement
Modern building materials contribute to high levels of greenhouse gas emissions and mostly rely on non-renewable resources, thus generating significant waste and harming the environment. The challenge is to find eco-friendly materials that perform well in construction. The EIC-funded AlgoLoam project will tackle this issue by creating loam walls with algorithmically generated 3D natural fibre reinforcement. These walls use entirely natural, biodegradable materials and are designed to be both self-supporting and lightweight. An interdisciplinary team of experts is developing the walls through digital modelling, experimental testing, and sustainable fabrication processes. Multiple applications in architecture and interior design are investigated for their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in new buildings.
Objective
We aim to develop Loam Walls with Algorithmically generated 3d Natural Fibre Reinforcement (AlgoLoam), as the first completely biodegradable, made of exclusively natural materials, self-supporting reinforced light loam wall solution, totally or partially prefabricated. AlgoLoam will be developed by an interdisciplinary team of architects, material scientists, textile technology experts, biomimetics experts, sustainability experts, mechanical engineers, loam/clay product developers and programmers, through collaborative, iterative processes to create critical interactions between disciplines. We will explore the applicability and limitations of using exclusively natural and sustainable, CO2 negative, materials to create a wall solution with multiple applications in architecture and interior design with the potential to reduce relative and absolute contributions of greenhouse gas emissions embodied in new buildings. The natural 3D reinforcement embedded in the wall elements will act as a biomimetic/ textile inspired skeleton, making the wall solution a symbiotic, mutually interdependent and enabling natural composite material system. Optimal usage of materials and improved mechanical properties and load-bearing capabilities of the loam volume will be ensured by applying topology optimisation and through algorithmic and parametric variation of the natural composite. AlgoLoam will be optimised for a CO2 neutral production process as digital fabrication, digitally enabled and optimised by the use of computational models. We will modell and generate algorithmically digital twins of the wall elements to will include information about material choices implications and consequences, such as heritage, sourcing to end of life cycle (cradle to cradle) and Life Cycle Assessment analysis, through which we aim for a holistic approach to building design, construction, operation and decommissioning.
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC GrantsCoordinator
1040 Wien
Austria