The Algae House About the First Building With a Bioreactor Façade

Edith Hemmrich, Mark Blaschitz and Jan Wurm discuss the world's first building equipped with an algae bioreactor façade in their publication entitled The Algae House on the occasion of the 14th Venice International Architecture Biennale in 2014. Together with three other "Smart Material Houses", the prototypical building by SPLITTERWERK and Arup forms part of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Hamburg. Microalgae are cultivated in glass photobioreactors to generate energy and, at the same time, to control light and shade. With its innovative floor plan typologies "Hamburg Apartment" and "Milan Apartment", the "Case Study House" presents contemporary refinements of Frank Lloyd Wright's "open plan", Adolf Loos's "Raumplan", and Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky's "Frankfurt Kitchen". The publication features recent essays as well as detailed plans and visuals from the first hand-drawn sketches, floor plans, cross-sections and details to a photo essay by the important Austrian architectural photographer Paul Ott.