Jan Knippers – författare

Whether it be as translucent sheets, broadly stretched membranes, and inflated foil cushions or in graceful, organic curves, architecture today is utilizing plastics in the most disparate forms and for a wide variety of purposes. Innovative technical developments are constantly improving its material properties; at the same time, there is a growing new awareness of its potential as a construction material. While plastics used to be employed primarily as an inexpensive variant on traditional building materials, they are increasingly regarded in the construction world today as a serious and viable alternative, be it as supporting structures, roofs, facades, or elements of interior design and decoration. Thanks in large part to this inherent self-sufficiency, plastics are currently enjoying an unprecedented surge in popularity, even among the international architectural avant-garde – as multiwall sheets or corrugated, fiber-reinforced panels, or as filling between glass panes. And the new generation of ecological bioplastics also pays tribute to the debate on sustainability, ridding plastics of their lingering reputation as environmental offenders.

From the history of plastics and membranes in architecture to their material properties and requirements in construction and design, the Plastics and Membranes Construction Manual cuts to the chase, providing the kind of solid and comprehensive overview of the subject that readers have come to expect from the Im DETAIL series. Selected project examples round off the reference work and make it indispensable for the day-to-day life of the professional planner and for every architecture library.

Die Natur war schon immer eine Inspirationsquelle für die Gestaltung menschlicher Umwelt. Die Analyse biologischer Konstruktionen kann nicht nur zu verblüffenden technischen Lösungen führen, sie kann auch die Architektur beflügeln.

Bionik ist ein faszinierendes Grenzgebiet zwischen Grundlagenforschung und praktischer Anwendung: Biologen, Chemiker, Physiker, Mineralogen und Paläontologen kommen ins Gespräch mit Materialwissenschaftlern, Ingenieuren und Architekten und übertragen ihre Erkenntnisse in Architektur und Bauwesen.

An einer Vielzahl von Beispielen aus der Praxis verfolgt die reich illustrierte Einführung den Weg von der Erkenntnis, wie etwas funktioniert, über die Abstraktion, etwa in Computermodellen, und den Bau erster Prototypen bis zur funktionierenden Fertigung und Produktion.

Nature has always been a source of inspiration for the design of the human environment. The analysis of biological constructions can not only lead to astonishing technical solutions but can also inspire the design of architecture.

Bionics is a fascinating border area between pure research and practical application: biologists, chemists, physicists, mineralogists, and paleontologists meet up with material scientists, engineers, and architects and transfer their knowledge to architecture and construction.

Using numerous practical examples, this richly illustrated introduction traces the process from the understanding of how something functions, to abstraction—for example in computer models—and the construction of initial prototypes, through to fully functional manufacture and production.

This book contains 24 technical papers presented at the fourth edition of the Advances in Architectural Geometry conference, AAG 2014, held in London, England, September 2014. It offers engineers, mathematicians, designers, and contractors insight into the efficient design, analysis, and manufacture of complex shapes, which will help open up new horizons for architecture.

The book examines geometric aspects involved in architectural design, ranging from initial conception to final fabrication. It focuses on four key topics: applied geometry, architecture, computational design, and also practice in the form of case studies. In addition, the book also features algorithms, proposed implementation, experimental results, and illustrations.

Overall, the book presents both theoretical and practical work linked to new geometrical developments in architecture. It gathers the diverse components of the contemporary architectural tendencies that push the building envelope towards free form in order to respond to multiple current design challenges.

With its introduction of novel computational algorithms and tools, this book will prove an ideal resource to both newcomers to the field as well as advanced practitioners.

This book comprises a first survey of the Collaborative Research Center SFB-TRR 141 ‘Biological Design and Integrative Structures – Analysis, Simulation and Implementation in Architecture’, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft since October 2014. The SFB-TRR 141 provides a collaborative framework for architects and engineers from the University of Stuttgart, biologists and physicists from the University of Freiburg and geoscientists and evolutionary biologists from the University of Tübingen. The programm is conceptualized as a dialogue between the disciplines and is based on the belief that that biomimetic research has the potential to lead everyone involved to new findings far beyond his individual reach. During the last few decades, computational methods have been introduced into all fields of science and technology. In architecture, they enable the geometric differentiation of building components and allow the fabrication of porous or fibre-based materials with locallyadjusted physical and chemical properties. Recent developments in simulation technologies focus on multi-scale models and the interplay of mechanical phenomena at various hierarchical levels. In the natural sciences, a multitude of quantitative methods covering diverse hierarchical levels have been introduced. These advances in computational methods have opened a new era in biomimetics: local differentiation at various scales, the main feature of natural constructions, can for the first time not only be analysed, but to a certain extent also be transferred to building construction. Computational methodologies enable the direct exchange of information between fields of science that, until now, have been widely separated. As a result they lead to a new approach to biomimetic research, which, hopefully, contributes to a more sustainable development in architecture and building construction.