Frugal Bauen - nachhaltiges Entwerfen und Konstruieren
The built environment is responsible for a large part of the world's emissions and resource consumption, this responsibility is hardly taken. The collective ’Frugal Bauen’ aims to occupy precisely this interface and advocates for local and circular solutions, (re)discovering traditional construction methods while being radically sustainable. This way of thinking is expressed in various works of the collective, whether it is a university course, an urban intervention or a building project.
National
Germany
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Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Naima Elena Last name: Mora Gender: Female Age: 23 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Germany Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Kobestraße 2 Town: Hamburg Postal code: 20457 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 1522 2439959 E-mail:naima.e.mora@gmail.com
First name: Yannik Lasse Last name: Fehmerling Gender: Male Age: 25 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Germany Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Peter-Marquard-Straße 2 Town: Hamburg Postal code: 22303 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 176 70492406 E-mail:lassefehmerling@gmx.de
First name: Luis Hans Last name: Neuber Gender: Male Age: 21 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Germany Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Arnimstraße 11 Town: Hamburg Postal code: 22609 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+491782940684 E-mail:Lu_neu@web.de
What does frugality mean? First of all the definition of frugality or frugal is closes described with humble or saving.
To us frugal in relation to architecture means to use as little resources as possible, to question needs, to build as little as possible and to take care of the environment and keep an eye on potentially harmful effects while building. It also means to use materials appropriately and smart. We are adapting the concept of frugality to architecture and want to gather knowledge that might have gone lost.
We want to make this knowledge accessible to architects and everyone else in a low-threshold manner.
We, three architecture students, started with the wish to improve our study programm since aspects of sustainable architecture are hardly touched in lectures and courses. Therefore we created a framework in which information about sustainable ways of building can be provided to students, teachers but also professionals and non-professionals who are interested in the topics.
At first, we crated a series of lectures held by interesting and well-knows architects in summer 2022. This series of lectures involved into a university course that took place during the last months. Since autumn we understand ’Frugal Bauen’ more as a collective.
We try to keep our work within the collective as diverse as possible and think of the collective as a space where various projects and ideas can be developed. So far we used the frame of the collective for lectures by experts, workshops (both for professionals and non-professionals), our own design projects, exhibitions, field trips (partly with students) and a design studio at the university.
Creation of local cycles for building materials and natural resources
(Re)discovering local building traditions
Knowledge transformation for sustainable construction
education on sustainable construction of professionals and non-professionals
Cataloguing of bio-based low Co2 building materials
The work of the collective is divided into four successive steps, three of which build on each other. Roughly summarised, it is about gathering knowledge in the first step, applying knowledge in the second and verifying the knowledge in practical experiments in the final one. In this way, one enters a cycle of professionalisation. Each further level questions and builds on the previous level, so knowledge is not only deepened but also qualitatively improved. The fourth and most important stage runs alongside and especially at the end. The documentation, both on the running project via social media but also through collected publications at the end of the projects, should both document the process but also make a multiplication of knowledge beyond the seminar group possible. In this way, we hope for a multiplication through the publications, but also through the seminar participants who carry their acquired knowledge into the world.
Here is a possible example of the structure of the seminar:
Obtain knowledge from professionals, e.g. through lectures
Let people think for themselves and work out solutions theoretically
Then apply the developed solutions practically in a 1:1 model or pavilion
-> renewed reproduction of the knowledge through the multitude of course participants and different areas. Continuous and conclusive documentation is essential.
Aesthetics are of enormous importance for durability; at the same time, construction plays a decisive role in architecture for longevity and thus sustainability. Aesthetics thus comes through the natural forms of building materials and results in the design process.
The positive emotions are triggered by the natural and tangible building materials, at the same time traditional and vernacular architecture is taken up and thus a positive reference is created again.
Besides the expanded life cycle aesthetics are also crucial when it comes to gaining acceptance by citizens, especially non-professionals, since their first impression is often bild on visual qualities. The confrontation with the topics on a deeper level comes as a second step.
To ensure the longevity and acceptance of buildings, a process of participation by the people of the region is of enormous importance. Inclusion in all phases of construction is an essential part of our work, even children get the opportunity to playfully experience the materials.
Furthermore it is important to us not to exclude people because of participation fees or other expenses. All of our workshops and lectures are free for all to join. For the field trips that we are planning for students we try to get financial support for example by the university.
To us it is really important to include non-professionals into our work since the build environment and the emissions created by it concerns all of us.
Therefore we keep all of our lectures and presentations public and for everyone to join. With printed posters (for the lectures and presentations) and our instagram we also try to expand our public reach to draw attention to the topic of sustainable building and to hopefully make more people interested in it.
Without the acceptance of a large part of the citizens there will not be a rethinking towards sustainable building methods, so this part is very important to us.
In addition to the public lectures we are also currently organizing an exhibition that will take part in summer 2023. The exhibition aims to bring the results of our design studio from this winter term into the city and a broader group of people.
The exhibition will take place in the St. Katharinen Church in Hamburg, Germany. The church is one of the seven main churches in Hamburg and located prominently right between the city center, the harbour and the new district HafenCity.
The exhibition will show the designes developed by the students in architectural drawings but it will also show the natural building materials used for the designs. In order to to that, the students are building 1:1 prototypes of parts of their designs.
This is a really crucial part of both our design studio and the exhibition for two reasons: Firstly: the students learn to work with the materials and gain a new feeling and perspective for them. Secondly: The people visiting the exhibition get into potentially the first contact with sustainable building materials and learn to trust them.
We are also currently working on a concept of an architecture and environment festival that we have been invited to. The visitors of the festival get the chance to learn about seaweed in a playful and low-key way and create something together.
Small local and regional solutions are to be found for a European problem, the consequences of man-made climate change. It is imperative that our future is regional; the creation of local value-added structures with short distances is of great importance.
At the same time, knowledge transfer, intangible exchange across national borders and joint European solutions are a must for the road ahead. A restriction to the smallest possible radius for the utilisation of raw materials and building materials does not exclude a European partnership, it consists much more of the knowledge of individuals.
The seminar is interdisciplinary and aims to involve all possible participants in the building process. This includes first and foremost architects, but also structural engineers, urban planners, graphic artists and designers. But researchers of settlement history will also be involved.
The innovative character consists of the unusual and forgotten building materials and methods, and at the same time various measures are intended to appeal to young and old. Especially the practical building is in the foreground.
On the one hand, the methodology of the four phases can be applied by other groups; at the same time, the collected knowledge around the phase and the knowledge documented at the end is freely accessible to all people. So there is no question of duplicating the knowledge beyond the boundaries of the collective. We are concerned with the creation of many small local sustainable structures that go back to what made the region decades ago and what the region was known for within the European borders. We as a collective are limited and can only give a certain number of courses and can only talk to a limited number of people, but what we can do through social media and publications is multiply and reach people across local borders and national borders. Inspiration is an essential part of our thinking and acting, besides the actual knowledge.
We are currently working on an exhibition that will be shown in one of Hamburg's main churches, St. Katharinen, in May and July. This exhibition should again appeal to professionals and non-professionals. At the same time, the exhibition should promote sustainable building materials through its visually appealing design. As this exhibition is not bound to the location, a later exhibition in other cities is planned. In this way, a multiplication of the people reached is possible through a generated product such as the exhibition.
We believe that a future of sustainable architecture implies a rediscovery of traditional and local building traditions. Our collective ’Frugal Bauen’ aims to address the needed heterogeneity that resolut from those re-discovered traditions. With giving those small-scale solutions the right amount of seriousness we hope to show alternative concepts against the globalized building industry that is highly harmful to the environment.
Our work on seaweed is an example for the idea explained above: We went to the danish island Læsø with the goal to learn about the traditional and local building material seaweed. Since we are also living close to the german coastline this project is really interesting to us. Seaweed itself can not be seen as a universal solution within the building industry but rather a small part within a diverse broad spectrum of solutions.
Besides finding those small-scale solutions for a more environmentally conscious architecture we are also interested in thinking about ways to use and improve existing structures.
