Biological Design and Integrative Structures – Analysis, Simulation and Implementation in Architecture

DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

01.10.2014 – 30.06.2018

The DFG (German Research Foundation) decided on May 15th to support the transregional Collaborative Research Centre TRR 141 Biological Design and Integrative Structures with a grant of 9.3 million Euro for four years. The nitiative focuses on the analysis and abstraction of design and construction principles in nature and their implementation in architecture.

Recent developments in computational design, simulation and fabrication offer new options for analysing natural  constructions and for transferring their principles to the macro-scale of building construction and other fields of  technology. The aim of the Centre is not only to increase performance, but also to transfer the inherent ecological properties of natural structures, i.e. mainly the effective usage of limited resources and closed material cycles, to architecture and building technologies.

The entire program of TRR 141 is conceptualized as a dialogue: An interdisciplinary team of architects and engineers from the University of Stuttgart, biologists and physicists of the University of Freiburg and geo- scientists and evolutionary biologists of the University of Tübingen will analyse and simulate multi-layered, hierarchically structured and finely tuned types of morphology taken from natural structures and develop strategies for implementing them in architecture. The results will provide the foundations for further investigations and a more detailed understanding of the studied biological systems.
At a higher level, the project aims to contribute to the conceptualization and foundation
of biomimetics as a scientific methodology in the context of architecture and building technologies.
TRR 141 is the first Collaborative Research Centre funded by the DFG in the field of architecture for many years.

University of Stuttgart
University of Freiburg
University of Tübingen
Naturkundemuseum Stuttgart
Fraunhofer IPB