On the Ecology of Climate & Structures

The paper discusses various aspects of the interrelation between climate and structures as part of the biosphere’s ecosystem. Structural design is hereby understood as a subsystem of humanity, seen as a biological organism, and the climate, as part of the organism’s abiotic environment. Possibilities within recent advancements in digitalization and automation to adopt structural design to climatic loading conditions and to mitigate the effect of the manufacturing of structures on the climate are presented as core disciplines of the research group ‘Climate&Structures’ and are placed within the ecosystem’s interrelations.

These disciplines are: observation and simulation of climatic loading phenomena (icing, snow- and wind loading), adaption of structures to these with parametric multi-objective and topology optimization, and realization of these structures with additive manufacturing with circular and recycled construction materials.