Wilhelm-Klauditz-Prize for Wood Research and Environmental Protection 2015 - Award Ceremony

Braunschweig, 8th October 2015

The International Association for Technical Issues related to Wood (iVTH), together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research WKI, presented the Wilhelm Klauditz Prize for Wood Research and Environmental Protection on 8th October 2015 in Braunschweig.
Every three years, the Wilhelm-Klauditz-Prize honours outstanding scientific or process-relevant work in the field of wood research and wood utilization with a focus on environmental protection. The prize is remunerated with 5,000 Euro.

This year the prize was awarded for the 9th time. The award committee selected the research project “Forstpavillon: Robotisch gefertigte Holzschalenkonstruktion” (“Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall: Robotics in Timber Construction”) submitted by a research group. In this project an exhibition hall was designed and constructed for the Landesgartenschau 2014 (horticultural exhibition) in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, to demonstrate new methods for the digital planning and robotic manufacturing of lightweight wood constructions. The building combines an efficient timber construction with a new, expressive architecture.
The building was conceived at the University of Stuttgart, developed at the Institute for Computational Design (ICD, Prof Achim Menges), at the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE, Prof Jan Knippers) and at the Institute of Engineering Geodesy (IIGS, Prof Volker Schwieger). The timber construction was performed amongst other in collaboration with Müllerblaustein Holzbau GmbH (Reinhold Müller and Benjamin Eisele).

In the laudation, Professor Dr.-Ing. Bohumil Kasal, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research WKI, emphasized the interaction of different technical disciplines to the advantage of wood as a material. As a role model for the wood industry and wooden construction, the project is an excellent example of how inter-disciplinary and cross-institutional research can produce a promising transfer of new technologies in the field of wood-based materials application.

The primary structure of the Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall is entirely made of robotically prefabricated lightweight beech plywood plates. Achieving a floor space of around 125 square meters with a room volume of 605 cubic meters, only twelve cubic meters of wood were used by the experts in the construction of the building. This highly resource efficient timber construction, made from locally available and renewable wood, is possible due to integration of computational design and simulation, fabrication as well as surveying methods. Therefore, the constructors were able to complete it within just four weeks.

The project was funded in part by the European Fund for Regional Development (ERDF), by Cluster Initiative Forest and Wood, Baden-Württemberg (Clusterinitiative Forst und Holz) and the project partners.