Summer School: Climate-friendly Construction with clay and bamboo

29.08.2022 - Last week, 44 students from the Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering took part in a design-build week focusing on sustainable building materials such as clay and bamboo as part of the elective course "Climate-friendly building | DESIGN BUILD". During the summer school, the participants from the Architecture, Civil Engineering, Architectural Heritage Conservation and Environmental Management and Urban Planning in Metropolitan Areas degree programs developed a 1:1 scale mock-up of important components for the guest houses of a bamboo training center to be built in Ghana.

Sustainable construction from concept to implementation

The Summer School is the second component of a three-part seminar series that will focus on climate-friendly construction in sub-Saharan countries over the course of two semesters. In a first step in spring 2022, the students dealt with the climate of West Africa, learned about the properties of sustainable local building materials and the typical local construction methods and usage requirements. On this basis, they developed a planning and implementation concept for the guest houses of a bamboo training center, which is to be implemented as part of a socially and ecologically motivated project of the GROW Colourful Ghana e. V. association.

The design-build week gave the students the opportunity to put their theoretical knowledge to the test using simple constructions made from sustainable materials so that they could contribute concrete findings to the further planning and implementation of the project. They implemented various design approaches and construction techniques on a pavilion measuring around 10 square meters, for example walls made of clay bricks and rammed earth or a roof construction made of bamboo. They also documented the process using various media, which will be presented together with the designs from the first project phase and the final result of the project in the coming winter semester. Also planned for the 2022/23 winter semester is a workshop on site in Ghana as the third and final step of the project, which will be organized together with GROW Colourful Ghana e. V. and a partner university of Hochschule RheinMain (HSRM).

Interdisciplinary and international development work

"The interdisciplinary and international design-build project offers our students a great opportunity to accompany and plan a concrete construction project from the first sketch to the completed building. As an interactive teaching format with visible practical results, the participants gain valuable experience with concrete research and practical relevance, while at the same time benefiting from international encounters and local development cooperation," says Prof. Sascha Luippold, who is supervising the project at HSRM. "By testing and improving constructions in practical experience rather than just theory, students are taught content that is not possible in theoretical lectures and traditional project work. They learn to think about construction practice right from the start, to organize themselves in terms of time, to coordinate with each other as trades and also improve their understanding of craftsmanship - skills that will be very useful in professional practice."