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A holistic approach to sustainability which takes into account environmental, economic, cultural and social issues manifests itself in the built environment. Integrative Design leading to an architecture, which is well-tempered in light, colour, materiality and space has always been able to bring up qualities which make the daily life comfortable, if not more. My research investigates the complex relationship between spatial composition and building typology on one side and thermal and climatic conditions within and between buildings on the other hand with the aim to achieve a greater energy efficiency in buildings as a key factor to a sustainable environment while considering the diversity of climates.

My research asks, how spatial design theory as a cultural phaenomenon can contribute to and enrich the development of sustainability and the reduction of energy consumption in architecture and building. Natural ventilation has been an integral part of vernacular architectural typology. With the development of mechanical air conditioning in the course if mechanization, building typology and the devices for heating and cooling have been separated in the design process. My research aims to reunite these essential means to a sustainable built environment by studying the development of free flow open spaces in traditional world architecture and through a re-reading of selected architectural icons of modernism. I use diagrammatic drawings and simulations with computational fluid dynamic software programs and propose the development of a design guide for greater sustainability in buildings today through architectural design and spatial composition thinking space itself as a climate technology.

This research initiated from a project in architectural practice and started from the empirical perception of the phenomenon that the three-dimensional connected spaces support the air flow to such a degree, that the temperature is kept at an agreeable level. Aesthetics and beauty will become a vital part of a holistic approach to sustainability.

Stream: Cultural Sustainability

Paper: Sustainable Building Typologies

My compass for research, teaching and practice is the Passage du Nord-Ouest as taken by Michel Serres to describe the passage between the humanities and science.

Through the course of my career I went from speculative urban concept designs for the newly unified Berlin to culturally and socially relevant communal architectural projects, which I worked on as a project architect. I then taught undergraduate design and structure studios at the Technical Unversity in Berlin, where I also carried out a research project in widespan steelconstruction and got more and more interested in the architectural space as a technology for more energy efficiency in building and climate design. I run my own practice in Berlin, Germany, was involved in higher education policy at the Fachhochschule in Potsdam. I am now setting up a research agenda at Iowa State University for the study of free-flow open space and air flow intertwined between culture, climate and nature as in the work of Alvar Aalto, to see materiality and construction, energyefficiency and sustainability in a critical cultural context. I am teaching Design in the Graduate School and start a course on Environmental Forces in Architecture.