Heritage for a Sustainable Future” aims at urging students to watch in retrospect at our past for progressing in the future. This is to revisit sustainable building systems able to respect our planet and reinventing them into a new perspective of architectural forms and structural designs able to reshape our cities of the future.

Reshaping our cities of the future meaning to research on the novel concept of fully reversible construction systems. These building systems are largely drawing inspiration from the design of temples – thus, taking advantage from the use of natural stones set in rows of interlocking stones having dry joints and possessing stable configurations of equilibrium due to their weight balance. This is so to meet the needs of our planet in a CO2 reduction as well as the one of flexible housing by the help of natural materials, which are reversible, modular, recyclable, and able to build solid constructions in a great variety of forms. This knowledge is also intended to be spent both in the reactivation of existing architectural heritage that is lacking integrity and/or seeking for a new purpose as well as into the strengthening of buildings so to withstand natural catastrophic events such as earthquakes. Then, this is also intended to push sustainability forward in the design of new architecture by exploring new horizons in the design of masonry constructions and city landscapes.

In collaboration with the City of Munich Prof. Elisabeth Merk

20/12 Students competition - the winning design will be the one built in January (13-17/01) at the 1:1 TUM workshop