The Intelligence of Loss in the Architectural Archive
Archives are core sites of destruction, decay, and loss. Whether through man-made causes or so-called natural disasters, much of humanity's stored material has been, and continues to be, eradicated. But what if we treated for getting not as a bug, but as a feature? While AI is hailed as a promise against loss, its own processes of erasure follow distinct patterns, revealing new ways of managing archival sustainability. This project approaches the intersection of archival disappearance and AI-driven erasure, reframing loss as a promise of other ways of knowing.
Anobium tunnels in a book. Documentation “What’s eating your collection?” ©Birmingham Museum/Art Gallery
Facts
| Role KIT: | Project partner |
| Project duration: | 2025–ongoing |
| KIT researchers: | Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Meister – saai | Archive for Architecture and Civil Engineering |
Project partners
Rafael Uriarte – Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut).
Bio-Inspired STEM Topics for Engaging Young Generations Thanks to the Use of Augmented Reality
The main objectives of the Bios4You AR 2.0 project is to sensitise young students to STEM issues related to Bio-Sciences, Bio-Engineering, Bio-Architecture, Bio-Technology, Bio-Photonics, etc and create innovative educational materials thanks to the use of new AR technologies in such a way as to make all much more engaging both from the point of view of learning and teaching by teachers.
Facts
| Funder: | European Union |
| Programme: | Strategic partnerships |
| Overall budget: | €400.000 |
| Grant amount: | €74.200 |
| Role KIT: | Project coordinator |
| Project duration: | 2024–2026 |
| KIT researchers: | Dr. Volker Koch, Tahereh Mallahnia – Professorship of Building Lifecycle Management |
Project partners
Kauno technologijos universitetas (Lithuania), EDUACT – DRASI GIA TIN EKPAIDEUSI (Greece), CEIPES (Italy), Tallinna Kesklinna Vene Gümnaasium (Estonia), Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy).
Methods for Reading Objects
Environments consist of designed objects: paper stacks on desks, coffee cups next to them, the chairs one sits on—they all shape the way one touches and looks at the world. Objects are material things produced with intentions. They are used as epistemic evidence and entry-point to understand shaped environments both historically and now. Coded is not an abstract technology, but the assumption that all objects have been programmed by cultural, social, technological, and aesthetic processes and carry traces of this coding within themselves. Coded Objects develops methods to read their form in order to critically understand past, current and potentially future environments that they configure.
Stackable Dishware by Nick Roericht (1959). ©HfG-Archiv, Museum Ulm
Facts
| Funder: | Max Planck Society, Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Meister – Professorship for Architecture Theory, saai | Archive for Architecture and Engineering |
| Programme: | Lise Meitner Excellence Program of the Max Planck Society |
| Overall budget: | Approx. €2.000.000 |
| Role KIT: | Project partner |
| Project duration: | 2023–2028 |
| KIT researchers: | Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Meister – Professorship of Architecture Theory |
Project partners
Anna-Maria Meister – Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut).
Research Into Robotic Prefabrication of a Locally Differentiated Clay-Fibre Composite Material System
The project combines the established research approach of gradient concrete with traditional earthen construction methods and their functional variations involving aggregate and straw additives, as well as current approaches to horizontally spanning earthen components with integrated biogenic tensile reinforcement.
Facts
| Funder: | Klimaschutz Stiftung Baden-Württemberg |
| Programme: | Ideas competition – Sustainable Construction Research |
| Overall budget: | €98.900 |
| Grant amount: | €98.900 |
| Project duration: | 2026 |
| KIT researchers: | Prof. Moritz Dörstelmann – Professorship of Digital Design and Fabrication |
Komorebi is a research project by the KIT professorships Design of Structures (dos) and Digital Design and Fabrication (DDF), focused on the development of a mobile shading structure to improve the thermal comfort in urban public spaces. Addressing the lack of shade in many central urban contexts, Komorebi combines seating with a lightweight, movable canopy made from bio-based materials, namely timber and flax fibres. The project explores digital design, fabrication, architectural geometry as well as elastically bent structures to create an adaptable and resource-efficient solution. Built as a full-scale demonstrator, it investigates microclimatic performance and aims to evolve into a scalable product for broader urban applications.
View of Komorebi on Karlsruhe’s Kronenplatz. @Tobias Wootton
Facts
| Funder: | KIT – IRM & Division IV |
| Role KIT | Project partner |
| Project duration: | 2025–ongoing |
| KIT researchers: |
Prof. Dr. Riccardo La Magna – Professorship of Design of Structures |
Project partners
FORMIC Transportsysteme GmbH, FibR GmbH.
The German Bureaucratic Paper Architectures of ca. 1922, 1936, 1953
The German term Norm is suspended between technical regulation and social mode of conduct. This project investigates how institutions and their agents tried to reshape the world one piece at a time: by dimensioning the window, they framed the inhabitant's view of the world; by formatting paper, they dimensioned the physical contact between citizen and state. Through the design of normed objects in three different German states (the Weimar Republic, the National-Socialist-Regime, and postwar reconstruction in West Germany) they produced and disseminated aesthetic and societal values. This project takes norms, standards, and their objects as kernels of aesthetic and political intentions.
The Norm Format and its Entourage – Drawing by Walter Porstmann, before 1927. ©Bernd Freese Collection
Facts
| Project duration: | Ongoing |
| KIT researchers: | Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Meister – Professorship of Architecture Theory |
Project partners
Anna-Maria Meister – Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut).
Revolutionary Architecture Design Through Generative AI Technologies
The project aims to develop and implement a new comprehensive, innovative and efficient BIM tool. The integration of generative artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud computing will create intuitive user interfaces and advanced data analysis functions. This will simplify and optimize integral and collaborative planning approaches. The ecological aspects in focus of the project include the integration of LCA to accompany planning and support for efficient energy planning. BLM is supporting the conception and integration of modules on the innovative topics of sustainable construction, integration of AI and collaborative data management.
Facts
| Funder: | VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH |
| Programme: | InvestBW – Innovation III |
| Overall budget: | Overall: €1.685.018 | KIT: €208.541 |
| Grant amount: | Overall: €858.476 | KIT: €208.541 |
| Role KIT: | Project partner |
| Project duration: | 2024–2026 |
| KIT researchers: | Prof. Dr. Petra von Both, Yannick Scherle – Professorship of Building Lifecycle Management |
Project partners
neoBIM GmbH.
In-Context Learning for Conversational Robotic Co-Fabrication in Construction
The project explores whether Vision Language Models (VLMs) can enable conversational control of industrial construction robots through in-context learning, without costly model training. Building on parameterized robotic skills (picking, placing, cutting, drilling), users describe fabrication goals in natural language while the VLM interprets context, plans sequences, and collaborates adaptively. This approach aims to replace expert programming with intuitive human–robot dialogue, lowering skill barriers and enabling agile, sustainable fabrication workflows. Full-scale experiments will test the boundaries of contextual reasoning for safe, goal-oriented robotic action in construction.
Facts
| Funder: | KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology |
| Programme: | WildIdeas |
| Grant amount: | €79.850 |
| Project duration: | 2026 |
| KIT researchers: | Prof. Moritz Dörstelmann – Professorship of Digital Design and Fabrication T-T-Prof. Rudolf Lioutikov – Intuitive Robots Lab |
Archival Constructs between Index Cards and AI
If you were to browse through the complete catalog of the saai, one would find works by over 200 offices and architects–yet only a few of them are women, or involve practices and spaces created for or by marginalized groups or diverse actors. If metadata are understood as objects, as are their processes, infrastructures and consequences, then techniques for their virtual indexing can be learned from the human-made information from collected objects. Only by critically examining the archive's material techniques and value systems can blind spots be revealed-and addressed in AI applications.
The index card accompanying the Egon Eiermann estate describing the competition materials of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, Berlin. ©Mechthild Ebert, saai
Facts
| Role KIT: | Project partner |
| Project duration: | Ongoing |
| KIT researchers: | Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Meister, Joshua Silver, Mechthild Ebert – saai | Archive for Architecture and Civil Engineering |
Project partners
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut), Sina Brückner-Amin (German Museum).
Nurturing Entrepreneurial Teaching and Learning for VET Excellence in Tourism Education
The project aims to refresh and modernize VET within the tourism sector by means of Extended Reality (XR) technology’s employment. Whether delivered in the form of Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) or Mixed Reality (MR), Extended Reality has proven itself to be an impressive tool, especially since the pandemic, allowing the inclusion of digital contents onto the real world by simply using personal devices, and paving the way for a better quality of learning. Therefore, as this technology is getting more and more userfriendly and economical, year by year, promoting a range of skills and competences useful for teachers and students to be able to use it in daily life is becoming increasingly important. TourXpeRience’s core objective consists of equipping VET students with the necessary skills and knowledge to become future leaders in the green tourism industry. Such an ambitious aim necessarily entails enhancing VET students' skills, boosting teachers' digital competencies and fostering sustainable tourism entrepreneurship.
Facts
| Funder: | European Union |
| Programme: | ERASMUS-EDU-2024-PEX-COVE |
| Overall budget: | €3.842.136 |
| Grant amount: | €186.600 |
| Role KIT: | Project partner |
| Project duration: | 2025–2029 |
| KIT researchers: | Dr. Volker Koch, Tahereh Mallahnia, Yannick Scheerle – Professorship of Building Lifecycle Management |
Project partners
Centro Internazionale per la Promozione dell'Ed It (Italy), Itet Marco Polo (Italy), Learnable Societa' Cooperativa a R.L. (Italy), Istituto Tecnico Superiore per le Tecnologie Innov (Italy), Asociacion Empresarial de Investigacion Centro T (Spain), Universidad Politecnica de Cartagena (Spain), Servicio Regional de Empleo y Formacion de la Reg (Spain), Datey Eyrich GmbH (Germany), Regionalna razvojna agencija za Podravje – Maribor (Slovenia), Visja Strokovna Sola za Gostinstvo in Turizem Ma (Slovenia), Siec Badawcza Lukasiewicz – Instytut Technologii (Poland), Shine 2Europe Lda (Portugal), Izba Przemyslowo-Handlowa Ziemi Radomskiej (Poland), Institoyto Biomichanikis kai Epicheirisiakis Epimorf (Greece), Institouto Syndesmou Elinikon Touristikon Epixir (Greece), Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences Bv (Netherlands), Turismo de Portugal I P (Portugal), Szkola Glowna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego (Poland), E.A.C.E. European Academy of Certified Education gGmbH (Germany), Interspread GmbH (Austria).
Wood Education for Sustainable Construction – Empowering professionals and students to build a more sustainable future through innovative and tailored training in circular wood and timber construction.
The WENUS project aims to revolutionise vocational education in wood and timber construction by integrating circular economy principles and 3D printing technology into the curriculum. This project focuses on developing sustainable practices and enhancing digital skills in the sector. Over a 24-month period, WENUS will create a joint curriculum, practical training exercises (3D Printing), and an e-learning platform, aiming to equip students and professionals with the skills needed for a sustainable future in construction.
Facts
| Funder: | European Union |
| Programme: | Strategic partnerships |
| Overall budget: | €250.000 |
| Grant amount: | €79.500 |
| Role KIT: | Project coordinator |
| Project duration: | 2024–2026 |
| KIT researchers: | Dr. Volker Koch, Maria Victoria Gomez Gomez – Professorship of Building Lifecycle Management |
Project partners
CETEM (Spain), INNORENEW (Solvenia), Globalnet (Poland).