Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rühe from the Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) at the University of Freiburg is one of the two spokespersons for the RTG ‘BioBuild – Bio-inspired Materials and Systems for Responsive Building Components’. Photo: Jürgen Gocke / University of Freiburg
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved the establishment of two new research training groups (RTGs) at the University of Freiburg. The new research training group RTG 3186, “New SM: Looking for Signposts towards the New Standard Model of Particle Physics,” will search for clues to unknown elementary particles or physical structures that could provide explanations for unsolved mysteries in particle physics. The new research training group RTG 3123 “BioBuild – Bio-inspired Materials and Systems for Responsive Building Components” at the Universities of Freiburg and Stuttgart focuses on bio-inspired building envelopes that react flexibly to weather and light conditions, thereby reducing the energy required to operate buildings.
The research training groups offer doctoral students the opportunity to pursue a doctorate in an attractive and tailor-made research and qualification programme. The new RTGs will be funded for an initial period of five years starting in spring 2026.
Building envelopes modelled on nature – “BioBuild”
The research training group RTG 3123 “BioBuild – Bio-inspired Materials and Systems for Responsive Building Components” deals with responsive building envelopes that dynamically adapt to environmental conditions such as temperature, light and humidity, thereby reducing the need for heating and cooling energy in buildings. The focus is particularly on flexible shading systems. Until now, these have been based on rigid mechanisms: individual elements of a blind can only move along straight axes and thus align themselves with the position of the sun to a limited degree.
The RTG is researching innovative components that can flexibly change their shape and react autonomously to environmental conditions. Nature serves as a source of inspiration, particularly pine cones: they adapt to the weather by opening or closing their scales depending on humidity. In doing so, they move extremely flexibly and at the same time are resource- and energy-efficient.
The RTG's spokespersons are Prof. Dr Jürgen Rühe from the Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) at the University of Freiburg and Prof. Dr Jan Knippers from the Institute for Building Structures and Structural Design (itke) at the University of Stuttgart. “We are also focusing on new material systems,” says Rühe. “So-called responsive materials change their shape independently in response to external influences. The use of these materials in responsive building envelopes makes complex control technology partially superfluous and reduces energy requirements, manufacturing costs and maintenance costs.”
The RTG combines the expertise of the University of Freiburg in the field of materials science and biomimetics from the Cluster of Excellence “Living, Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems (livMatS)” with the expertise from the University of Stuttgart in computer-based planning and manufacturing for architecture from the Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture” (IntCDC). Architects, engineers and scientists conduct joint research in RTG 3123.
DFG Press Release (German only)
Press Release of the University of Stuttgart