On Monday, April 07, 2025, in the second event of the talk series Zegeye Cherenet delivered a conversation with Lesley Lokko at Lucerne theatre.  The “African Voices Lucerne” series brings together prominent figures from Africa to discuss the future of the continent and its place in the world. The guests cover a broad spectrum of expertise: they include scientists, artists, intellectuals, educators, architects, civil society leaders, and religious leaders. Each event brings together a guest from Africa with a person of African descent living in Switzerland. “African Voices Lucerne” is a joint initiative of the Arthur Waser Foundation and the Lucerne Theater.100

On Wednesday, January 15, 2025, Sandra Böhm and Elena Boerman delivered a lecture at BAU 2025 in Munich on the “Potentials and Perspectives of Renewable Materials in Construction.” The lecture was based on last year’s publication by Fraunhofer IRB Verlag: “Vom Bauen mit erneuerbaren Materialien – Die Natur als Rohstofflager”. The presentation took place as part of the conference “Zukunft des Bauens: Biobasierte Baustoffe im Fokus” in the “Innovation Hub” forum. The event provided a platform to explore the potential of biobased building materials and discuss the challenges and opportunities of integrating renewable materials into construction practices. Particular emphasis was placed100

The Norman Foster Foundation (NFF) presents the ‘On Cities’ Masterclass Series, a series of thirty-minute-long masterclasses which explores the most pressing and compelling topics related to contemporary cities. Given by twenty leading experts in the fields of architecture, urbanism, economics and mobility, this video series supports the NFF’s extensive educational programme by promoting an exchange of knowledge across a range of geographic and disciplinary perspectives. Although cities may offer significant advantages for inhabitants, urbanisation is widely regarded as one of the fundamental challenges for public health, social equity and sustainability. To meet these challenges, speakers touch themes such as urban100

Increasingly scarce resources and the resulting desire to turn away from today’s throw-away mentality result in the construction industry increasingly having to think about multiple use and recycling of materials as well as alternative construction methods. But what does recycling mean for the construction industry? The seminar “Bauen in der Kreislaufwirtschaft” on September 29th at the Empa NEST in Dübendorf will discuss how cycles in construction can be closed, which concepts already exist and where new solutions can be found. Felix Heisel and Sandra Böhm will provide insights into current research at KIT Karlsruhe and the construction of the Urban Mining100

Dirk Hebel presented the team´s latest work at ASTOC Architects and Planners in Cologne on September 12, 2019. “Since 2016, ASTOC regularly takes time once a month to listen to colleagues who report on their projects or invited guest speakers on various topics relating to architecture and urban planning, to let us be inspired and discuss. This professional exchange helps us to share knowledge and to think outside the box.”

Dirk E. Hebel speaks at the BAU Munich 2019 on the conference “Renewable, Rediscovered and Recycled – Materials for Sustainable Construction”. The public debate on the energy balance of construction increasingly focuses on the gray energy of buildings. This refers to the total balance of energy consumed in the manufacture, transportation, processing, use and disposal of building materials. Wood and other renewable building materials and resources are experiencing a comeback, especially in environmentally conscious sectors. The conference “Renewable, Rediscovered and Recycled – Materials for Sustainable Construction” addresses materials in and on buildings that are reusable, biodegradable or renewable, thus ensuring100

In his capacity as 2018 Harvard GSD Guest Lecturer, Felix Heisel is presenting a lecture titled ‘Resource-Adequate Construction’ on 26th September 2018 at Gund Hall, Cambridge, USA within the reCyclo Design Studio by Visiting Associate Professor in Architecture Caroline O’Donnell. For more information please click here.

On 3rd Juli, Dirk E. Hebel will be speaking at the SFB1244 lecture series “Adaptivität als Utopie” at Stuttgart University. Titled “Material Architektur”, the lecture will start at 7pm at the ILEK, Pfaffenwaldring 14. For more information, please click here.

On 03. Juli, Felix Heisel is speaking at the Re-Cycle, Re-Use conference in Cologne about “innovative building concepts for the 21st century”. The full program and a link for registration can be found here.

On October 13 – 12pm, Felix Heisel holds a public lecture at Milstein Hall as part of his engagement as Hans and Roger Strauch Visiting Critic at Cornell University, USA. The talk – titled “rethinking abundance, resource-adequate building, and the example of UMAR” – follows the conviction that all resources required to construct a building must be fully reusable, recyclable, or compostable. This places life-cycle thinking at the forefront of the design. Instead of merely using and subsequently disposing of resources, they are borrowed from their technical and biological cycles for a certain amount of time before being returned into circulation100

On September 11, Felix Heisel is holding a public lecture at Cornell University APP titled Building from Waste – the Waste Vault as part of his engagement as Hans and Roger Strauch Visiting Critic the coming semester in New York. He is co-teaching the design study Cyclo: Architectures of Waste with Caroline O’Donnell and Dillon Pranger, which looks at “non-cyclables” as potential materials for new form generation. Cyclo will first map currently obscure recycling networks in the United States and globally, documenting where our various recycling-bound materials go to be processed, and searching for materials that are not recycled (whether due to material100

Prof. Dirk E. Hebel hält am 18.05.2017 auf der Designmesse INTERZUM in Köln die Key-Note “Building from Waste”. Außerdem stellt das Fachgebiet neuartige Baumaterialien aus seiner Forschungsarbeit aus. Mit Blick auf die steigende Weltbevölkerung und eine auf den Ressourcenverbauch ausgelegte Industriekultur des 20. Jahrhunderts wird in der Circular Economy ein Idealbild für ein Wirtschaften mit den vorhandenen Werkstoffen gesehen. Der Strategieansatz verfolgt das Ziel, Stoffströme zu schließen, Materialien nach Möglichkeit in geschlossenen Kreisläufen zirkulieren zu lassen und den Wert von Produkten so lange zu erhalten, wie es wirtschaftlich sinnvoll ist und qualitativ möglich erscheint. Die INTERZUM-Konferenz “Circular Thinking” wird am 18. Mai100

On 22 June, 12pm Felix Heisel speaks at the FCL Lunch Talk + Book Launch in Singapore. Informality resembles an evolutionary process more than a simple absence of rules. In itself, informality is neither illegal, nor dysfunctional, nor indicative of poverty; in fact, its actors, skills and capital are probably our best chance to solve the world’s growing housing crisis. Thus, Lessons of Informality describes an array of planning strategies and possibly even a roadmap to a resilient city in emerging territories. The book includes a DVD of _Spaces, a series of six documentaries on informality in Addis Ababa. For more100

«Schnittmengen» How does the term ‘intersecting set’ influence the work of JOM? Philippe Jorisch and his partners Stefan Oeschger and Michael Metzger speak at the Architekturforum on 8th June on their work as part of the leacture series ‘Young Architects’. More information here: www.jom.ch

Public Lecture by Felix Heisel as part of this years ETH Treffpunkt Science City “Rohstoff Erde” on 15th November 2015. Titled “Die Stadt der Zukunft”, the lecture will address waste as a resource for resilient future cities in the hope for a paradigm shift where we stop to distinguish between waste and supply. The full program of the ETH Treffpunkt Science City can be found here.

Public lecture by Asst. Prof Dirk E. Hebel at the fifth World Sustainability Forum in Basel, Switzerland on September 7th, 2015. From the organizers: “The 5th World Sustainability Forum aims to be a platform for researchers to present and engage with research-relevant stakeholders on issues relating to sustainability. We seek to contribute to policy-relevant, change-oriented, and transdisciplinary research and collaboration from science and technology, the life sciences, and the social sciences.”