All projects from the School of Architecture, Design and Civil Engineering
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Concrete Structural Reusability
This project explores the vast potential of reusing concrete structural components, driven by its notable environmental advantages such as reduced CO2 emissions and material conservation. Despite its promise, this practice remains largely unexplored due to challenges related to variable quality and rebar ...
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Intelligent Configurator
Development of a web-based building design configurator to enable a product-approach to construction. The project is a research collaboration of the ZHAW Center for Building Technologies and Processes, TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment and Implenia AG and includes: Development of a ...
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SwissSTES - Swiss Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage Action Plan and Implementation
Substituting fossil fuels with renewable energies will not be feasible without a massive expansion of seasonal energy storage. Seasonal thermal energy storage (STES) can make a significant contribution here. To date, the importance of STES for improving security of supply has been overlooked, although it has a great ...
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SWIRCULAR
The project aims at establishing a Swiss Circular Construction Digital Ecosystem to facilitate the paradigm shift towards a circular construction industry. Using a transdisciplinary approach, we will develop economic, legal, and technological innovations to aid adoption of circular practices in the Architecture, ...
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Settlement edges – Transition areas
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new circular processes for in-situ cast concrete structures
The reuse of building components is an extremely efficient way of reducing grey energy and greenhouse gas emissions in the construction of buildings. The research project "new circular processes for in-situ cast concrete structures" is a pioneering endeavour that is investigating the entire process from dismantling ...
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Tor Alva - White Tower
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Chinese Zero Emission Buildings with Swiss Know-How (ZEB China)
Reducing the operational energy used to heat and cool buildings in China is key to mitigating climate change, as the building sector is a major emitter of CO2 emissions. Estimating the impact of introducing building retrofit and changes in energy standards for China is challenging due to the size and heterogeneity ...
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Emission Zero: A sustainable construction simulation game, 1990-2050
Imagine a city somewhere in Switzerland. The year is 1990 and now it's about pursuing sustainable development that aims to achieve emission zero by 2050 at the latest. Where to start? What strategies must and can be used to perhaps achieve this goal beforehand? This city is a simulation within a video game and you ...
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Spatial Abilities
Spatial abilities are one form of knowledge among others and are fundamental for the orientation and appropriation of the environment for human beings. It is furthermore a success factor for STEM studies. While existing training methods are based on paper-pencil systems, we propose the development of an interactive, ...
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A look into the future: urban planning for all with the public digital 3D city model of Winterthur
The project aims to make the digital 3D city model of Winterthur accessible to the general public. This is made possible through the use of an app in combination with VR (virtual reality) technology. Citizens have the opportunity to view planned urban development changes, for example in the context of municipal or ...
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MetaSim – From high-fidelity to data-driven building energy performance simulation
The project proposes a data-driven meta model to analyze building energy performance. Through the model reduction process, the complexity of building simulation is removed such that the method becomes accessible to practitioners in planning, thus supporting a more sustainable building design. ...
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“Humans-in-the-loop” – An occupant-centric digital framework for sustainable building operation
The project will develop a digital framework for fusing, analysing, forecasting, and visualising dataflows to promote informed sustainable and occupant-centric building operation decisions, and sustainable behavioural changes of the occupants. To this aim, it is created a detailed energy model (EM) of the Haus ...
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CPC technology for bearing structures in building construction
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Reuse of Steel structural elements
Creation of an algorithm (flowchart) in the form of a prototype website with drop-down menu, for cataloguing load-bearing steel elements in existing buildings in order to improve the reuse of components and thus save CO2 emissions.
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CarNe – Carbon Negative Biochar-based Building Insulation Materials
This research project proposes the development of bio-based, carbon negative building insulation material building upon a successful previous feasibility study. The material development is based on the use of organic waste material which is further processed using natural binders and a subsequent carbonization step. ...
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MoCool - Occupant-centric, mobile, radiant panel cooling for increasing summer comfort in offices
This project proposes a novel mobile panel cooling solution for buildings in response to the increasing demand for space cooling. By using phase change materials for thermal energy storage the cooling panels are no fixed installation but can actually be moved freely in the space and used on demand only. Conventional ...
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Swiss IPD
The Swiss IPD project proposes a practical method for Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) specific to the Swiss construction market and its legal, regulatory and cultural environment to significantly improve the efficiency, quality and sustainability of construction projects in Switzerland. Traditional project ...
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earth to earth
Establishing of a hybrid research and teaching format of the Centre for Building Technologies and Processes at ZHAW, in collaboration with the Accademia di architettura at USI (Università della Svizzera italiana). Annual workshops demonstrate how digital fabrication methods can contribute to more sustainable ...
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Where am I? A video game about building culture integration and mourning for Ukrainian children and young people in Zurich
An innovative video game aims to help refugee children from Ukraine integrate and feel at home in Zurich. They can playfully explore the city of Zurich in a virtual way and at the same time establish local references to their hometown. In a 3D model of the city of Zurich, defining buildings are modeled, e.g. the ...
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Development of a metalfree System for external prestressing of the cpc concrete structures
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TCology - Thermo-Chemical Network Ecology
The research project TCology is addressing the novel topic of thermochemical networks (TCN) for heat and cold generation, distribution and storage and aims at identifying suitability and applicability to the Swiss context. In comparison to classical hydronic district heating and cooling networks (DHCN), TCNs show a ...
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Challenging or Reproducing the Status Quo?
From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, architecture in Italy and in particular in Milan was strongly bound and motivated by political conviction. In history books, though, all that is left of this intense period of intellectual and professional activity seems to be the sole figure of Aldo Rossi, especially in ...
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Potential of buildings for biodiversity and landscape quality in agglomerations
Initial situation:Increasing building density is putting pressure on green spaces and thus on the living conditions for flora, fauna and people. However, the sixth IPPC report and the Covid 19 pandemic clearly demonstrate this: Green spaces that enable recreation and the experience of nature in the immediate ...
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METAVEH - Metamaterial Enhanced Vibration Energy Harvesting
This project aims at realising innovative Lead-free electromechanical energy harvesting systems based on metamaterial wave focussing capacity; these will be easily transported, and installed, to power, in a clean and low-cost manner, autonomous wireless sensing devices thereby eliminating batteries and human ...