In 2013 the German city of Hamburg hosted the International Building
exhibition
the IBA seven years in the making the exhibition wasn't just about showcasing
innovative buildings it was about regeneration of a relatively poor
neighborhood in the city
with sustainable living in mind
The real excess will be visible
let me say in 5 or 7 years but
until now, today, I can't say we are
more successful than I would have expected for today
So what innovation was showcased here
that made it such a success?
Well first up there was Wood Cube
a five-story carbon-neutral apartment block constructed almost entirely from
wood
and gets its power solely from photovoltaic panels
wood has a new boom, a new career,
as a construction material
we find five
different wood houses with completely different
technologies but all based on wood and this is of course very interesting for
the different construction firms to see
how people respond to these different
materials to these different technologies
and so I think we will see in future
which materials which technologies
would succeed and move which will fail
And finally the IBA showcased a world first
BIQ, a building with its own
bio-reactor the runs entirely off Algae
the sun-facing sides of this structure are covered with water tanks where algae bask in
the light
what happens next is truely innovative The system's designer
Martin Kerner gives an inside look at his groundbreaking bio-reactor
What we produce here in this vessel is to burn
bio-gas and reproduce our flue-gas
and the flue-gas contains CO2 and the CO2
is transfered in to our culture medium
by these situation devices
so we saturate the water with flue gas with CO2
and then transfer it back into our bio-reactor facade
so that the algae can take up the CO2 with this
device over here we add nutrients
that means mainly nitrogen and phosphorous to our culture medium
with these large tubes over there at the roof
me take all the heat from the culture medium
and transfer it into our heating system of the house
But it isn't just heating
that micro-organisms can produce this reactor can also farm excess amounts of algae
that can be harvested for an entirely different reason
This is rich in
and proteins, its rich in unsaturated fatty acid, it contains
vitamins, minerals, and so on, so it's physiologically very
positive and we would like to make
food and feed for animals out of this biomass
So this bio-reactor has the capability of not only heating our homes
but also of feeding our livestock