Bio-Sourced Materials from Prototype to Building | Autumn 2025 ‒ IBOIS ‐ EPFL

The Autumn 2025 studio explored architectural prototyping not merely as a representational tool, but as a research instrument for developing buildings through bio‑sourced material systems, fabrication constraints, and construction logics. In this context, an architectural prototype is understood as a full‑scale or scaled physical model through which spatial qualities, material behaviour, construction techniques, and user interaction can be tested prior to architectural implementation. Unlike purely digital models, prototypes enable direct, tangible engagement, allowing architects and engineers to evaluate feasibility, performance, and constructability under real-world conditions.

Prototypes have long served as instruments of architectural experimentation—from Gaudí’s plaster models to contemporary 1:1 constructions such as the Khudi Bari in Bangladesh. They help address environmental challenges, construction risks, and community needs by reducing uncertainty while fostering innovation. Particularly in low-resource contexts, prototyping brings creativity and necessity together, enabling the development of adaptive structures grounded in both material logic and lived experience.

“Once a construction culture becomes embedded in norms, insurance policies, tendering procedures, energy regulations, building-permit laws, material safety factors, educational programmes, and so forth, envisioning systemic change becomes extremely challenging—though not impossible. New ideas and processes are required to create spaces where the stuff of dreams can become reality for everyone involved. We fortuitously found one such way: architecture as prototyping.”

The pedagogical structure followed a three‑phase research trajectory: visits and research, prototype application, and architectural application.

In the first phase, we introduced students to Rhino and Grasshopper as instruments for geometric control, tolerance management, and structural simulation reasoning. Through targeted exercises—including 3D‑scanning workflows, round‑wood adaptation strategies, and parametric geometry control—students built the technical foundation necessary for material‑driven design. To broaden their material and cultural references, the studio visited the Ballenberg Open‑Air Museum, where Swiss vernacular constructions from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries—primarily built with natural materials—were documented and analysed through drawings and sketches.

Sketch of Vernacular Building at Ballenberg – Emil Valtteri Kähkönen

Sketch of Malka Roof – Emil Valtteri Kähkönen

In the second phase, we focused on developing self‑bearing prototypes using bio‑sourced materials such as timber lattices, grass fibres, and earthen bricks. Drawing on geometric principles, traditional construction techniques, and building cultures from students’ home regions, roof, wall, and foundation systems were fabricated and iteratively tested. Waterproofing strategies, joinery details, and structural behaviour were critically assessed during interim juries, confronting students with the physical constraints and performance demands of material‑driven architecture.

Detail Drawing of Shingles – Emma Agostini

Detail Drawing of Roof – Louis Leon Distler

Concept Drawing of Chapel – Tim Knesebeck

In the third phase, the prototypes were systematically translated into architectural proposals in the form of small chapels, shifting from local construction fragments to coherent building organisations and massing strategies derived from the tested systems. Four projects were further developed into full‑scale or 1:2 mock‑ups. Students produced component‑level drawings and executed CNC milling, band‑saw cutting, dowelled timber joints, grass‑brick assemblies, and compressed‑earth block fabrication. Issues such as assembly sequencing, fabrication tolerances, cutting parameters, and logistics were resolved through construction. These final artefacts served as experimental verdicts, revealing the scalability, structural limits, and architectural implications of the original prototype logics.