Computation for a new age of Resource AWare architecture: waste-sourced and fast-growing bio-based materials

ongoing

This project proposes a breakthrough resource model for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) fostering a steep change in the way we design and fabricate our built environment, overcoming the fundamental limits that the natural variability sets within bio-based material streams for the green transformation of the industry. With a central focus on the alternative materials of waste-sourced and fast-growing materials, RAW assembles world-leading researchers and entrepreneurs in material sourcing (UIBK, LTU, OMTRE), non-destructive material characterisation (LTU, DTU), non-prescriptive computational design, and adaptive fabrication (KADK, USTUT) in a unique consortium to establish the foundation of a novel resource model for AEC linking design, analysis and fabrication through an innovative computational infrastructure and embracing the variability of resources, with the ambition to minimise waste, enable circularity, increase carbon storage in building, allow uptake of currently disregarded bio-based materials in AEC and pave the way for new aesthetic expressions and tectonics in architecture.