Researchers from the Technical University of Munich hope to transform building envelopes into animal and plant habitats using a software plug-in that incorporates habitat knowledge into the building design process.
As part of his doctoral research, Frédéric Lapierre works on creating and improving culture media for biocementing bacteria—which could yield sustainable applications for the construction industry and environmental engineering.
One hundred years after it was founded, the Margaretenau building cooperative is getting a facelift. Researchers on the MAGGIE project are working to ensure the renovations deliver energy savings and meet climate targets.
At the HM Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences, a model project on recycled concrete shows how demolished buildings can literally take on new forms.
What a tree needs to grow and how it affects its surroundings varies from species to species. This makes it increasingly important for cities to adapt the urban tree cover to local conditions. A team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has developed the online tool CityTree. Cities, municipalities and interested individuals can use it to find out how 12 common tree species are growing in 34 German cities and how they will benefit the local climate in the future.
A remarkable archaeological breakthrough has been made with the excavation and restoration of rooms in the pyramid of Sahura. The discovered chambers are probably storage rooms intended to hold the royal burial objects.
People are able to perceive their surroundings in three dimensions and can quickly spot potential danger in everyday situations. Drones have to learn this. Prof. Stefan Leutenegger refers to the intelligence needed for this task as ‘spatial artificial intelligence’, or spatial AI. This new approach will be used by cartographers mapping forests, in ship inspections and when building walls.
Nature in city environs has a positive effect on people's well-being. At the same time biological diversity in urban areas continues to shrink, for example because of increasing building density. In the "Ecolopes" project, researchers led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are searching for specific solutions which will make it possible to create green infrastructure with a higher degree of biological diversity in urban areas.
Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) conducted a multi-year empirical study to assess the impact of trees on city temperatures. Taking the city of Würzburg as an example, the researchers showed that vegetation cover of approximately 40 percent is needed to bring about lower summer temperatures.
The huge Buzludzha monument in the Bulgarian mountains stands out. It looks like a stranded UFO that is increasingly decaying. In an interview, Professor Thomas Danzl explains how this iconic monument of post-war socialist modernism is to be preserved, why this is also about controlled decay, and why he was impressed by more than just the largest modern murals in Europe.