Pioneers
Long before biobased building became a current topic, a group of architects, designers and researchers in Eindhoven explored how buildings could be healthier for people and the environment. They linked architecture with natural materials, a healthy indoor climate, ecological responsibility and human scale. Professor Peter Schmid played a central role. His teaching and research formed fertile ground for VIBA, founded in 1976.
Knowledge, inspiration and practice also grew from De Kleine Aarde, De 12 Ambachten, later Stichting Mens & Architectuur, programmes at TU Delft and Wageningen University, and Sustainable Building Demonstration Projects. Historical drawings, publications and realised projects reveal a rich heritage whose ideas are highly relevant again today.
Since graduating in the Netherlands in 1990, Barbara Wojtkowska has been connected to this tradition. Together with Mieke Weterings and fellow professionals from this network, she brings dispersed knowledge and materials together again. Experienced architects, Building Biology Consultants and leading biobased-material companies contribute to the exhibition.
The Spiral
This network emerged more than fifty years ago around the Vereniging Integrale Bio-logische Architectuur (VIBA) and Professor Peter Schmid’s chair at Eindhoven University of Technology. Its foundation of knowledge, inspiration and practice also lies in De Kleine Aarde, De 12 Ambachten, later Stichting Mens & Architectuur, programmes at TU Delft and Wageningen University, and Sustainable Building Demonstration Projects.
Within VIBA, the Harmonicale Ellips Working Group emerged in the early 1990s. It explores the relationship between harmony, proportion, nature, intuition and spatial experience. For Peter Schmid, harmony was an essential part of bio-logical architecture.
The spiral form of the exhibition refers to this tradition. It creates an open route through drawings, publications, projects and material samples, with spaces for meeting, presentation and practical work. In this way, form, knowledge and matter come together. Experienced architects, Building Biology Consultants trained at the International Institute for Building Biology and Sustainability (IBN), and leading biobased-material companies contribute to the exhibition.
Nature Builds
Nature provides almost everything needed to build: earth, wood, straw, plant fibres, lime and even waste streams that can become raw materials again. The architects and researchers around Professor Peter Schmid experimented with materials that mainstream construction had lost sight of. They built with clay and straw, investigated agricultural residues and explored applications for fast-growing plants such as miscanthus, even in India. What seemed experimental then is now returning as biobased building. It took almost fifty years for these ideas to begin flourishing on a wider scale. Today they are no longer marginal, but the beginning of a new building culture. Through material samples, demonstrations and small workshops, the exhibition makes this knowledge tangible and passes it on to a new generation.
