VisibleN | Making sustainability visible

The teaching-research project “Planetary Future Lab - Exchange for an eco-social future” aims to bring together different actors such as neighborhoods, social services, businesses and social movements to strengthen eco-social resilience and community. It creates a transprofessional space for the exchange of initiatives that are committed to a sustainable future. The project brings together stakeholders from Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region, promotes synergies and develops sustainable infrastructures for cooperation with students from all faculties. 

Students are actively involved in the project and learn from innovative players, expand their knowledge and make contacts for future career opportunities. The project will result in a brochure with profiles of the players, stakeholder mapping and sustainable networking. 

As part of the project “Grey Energy Atlas Frankfurt”, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Florian Mähl, students of the Master of Architecture, building on the seminar “Material and Energy” in winter semester 2023/2024, examined a number of buildings on the campus of the university and in the city of Frankfurt for the grey energy “built into” them.

For the atlas, the amount of (non-renewable) primary energy and greenhouse gas emissions generated for the creation of the existing building fabric in its life cycle to date will be determined for four buildings (Buildings 2 and 8 on the Frankfurt UAS campus, Labsaal and Neue Mensa on the Bockenheim campus of Geothe University) and summarized in a final publication. The aim is to provide laypersons and decision-makers with concrete figures to facilitate the discussion about preservation or demolition.

Urban planning models are often made of non-decomposable materials. In order to enable the more sustainable construction of working models in future courses at Frankfurt UAS, Prof. Dr Jan Dieterle and Prof. Dr Natalie Heger are planning the ‘Model Construction Kit for Urban Planning’ in basic subjects of urban planning and architecture.

The building blocks, made from recycled wood, can be assembled into working models on a scale of 1:1000 as required. Without the effort of procuring materials and cutting them to size, students can playfully approach the aspects of urban design, try out different variants and record them photographically. The aim is to massively reduce the amount of waste, especially from Styrodur and glued wooden base plates.

The aim of the student project led by Prof Hans Jürgen Schmitz, was to develop a package of measures as part of the university's sustainability strategy to reduce energy requirements and CO2 emissions. This was to be achieved through measures that were as simple and quick to implement as possible, primarily in the area of measurement-control-regulation of the buildings. The elaboration was based on solution approaches that were developed as part of an elective subject for individual areas of building operation at Frankfurt UAS.

In the “CO2-Parcours” project, a carbon footprint calculator was developed and implemented under the direction of Prof. Gabriela Alves Werb, which asks a manageable number of questions in the areas of mobility, accommodation, nutrition and consumption. The results are presented at the end using practical comparisons so that users can better understand their generated emissions compared to others. The results are stored anonymously.

It was initially used as part of the Frankfurt UAS presence on the EURO24 fan mile. The aim is also to implement it in the university's sustainability dashboard.

As a basis for the future design and greening of the campus, Faculty 1: Architecture - Civil Engineering - Geomatics at Frankfurt UAS is carrying out the student project Campus Mapping. Using various techniques - such as mapping, recording user behaviour, pathway networks, photographs and drawings, tree vitality measurements and thermal images - the campus is being mapped, documented and visualized. The project is coordinated and led by Prof. Dr. Jan Dieterle and Ruth Schlögl, in collaboration with tutors from the Bachelor's degree course in Urban Planning. The aim is to document the current state of the campus from different perspectives in order to create a broad basis for planning the campus design and to support the moderation of different ideas, interests and needs. The maps, images and data produced will be used for future campus design processes. 

The results of the project have been published in a brochure (in German).

To the project poster (in German).

The EcoDesign teaching project is about analyzing the entire life cycle of an everyday object using the example of a toaster, from production and use through to recycling and disposal, with the aim of optimizing product design primarily from an ecological, but also from an economic and technical perspective. The core is to anticipate the processes that take place with and in a product and their effects in all product life phases and to select, design and optimize them from the point of view of environmental and resource compatibility. The user's interaction with the product, which in turn depends heavily on the design of the human-product interface, and his or her appreciation of the product play an important role here. 

GreenKart Campus

The aim of the project is to document the development of the campus with a view to increasing biodiversity. By mapping the sealed, unsealed and greened areas, the sealing, unsealing and greening can be recorded and documented. The mapping is based on digital orthophotos (DOP), i.e. distortion-free, georeferenced aerial photographs. These are true to scale and, depending on their ground resolution, can be used directly for mapping.

DOPs are produced by the HVBG for the whole of Hesse with a ground resolution of 20 cm (DOP20) in 4 color channels (multispectral, i.e. red, green, blue, near infrared). In the near-infrared range, living vegetation reflects the incident light particularly well; therefore, infrared aerial photography plays an important role for all information on the state of vegetation.

The Surveying Office of the City of Frankfurt also has digital orthophotos, which are taken annually for the Frankfurt city area. These aerial photographs are available with a ground resolution of 10 cm.

The image flights of almost all providers are primarily carried out in the period January-February, at a time of year when the terrain is not yet covered by tree foliage. This makes it easier to map the ground surfaces.

The condition of the UAS campus will initially be recorded and mapped within a GIS environment for 2021 and 2022 based on existing data from the HVBG and Stadtvermessung Frankfurt. From spring 2023, the condition of the greenery can be recorded annually with higher resolution multispectral data using our own UAV flights. This will make it easier and more accurate to record green facades in particular. This should also simplify the recording of surface materials on the campus.

Since the coronavirus crisis, delivery networks have been robust and handle large delivery volumes. While online retailers are benefiting from the crisis, retailers in cities and municipalities that are not critical of the system have had to close to the public and offer a rudimentary, self-organized delivery service. In Darmstadt, from May 2020 to December 2020, a prototype bike delivery service was set up with the integration of local retailers and current cargo bike solutions and empirical research was conducted on the acceptance of such a delivery service by suppliers (retailers), bike couriers and customers.

In order to investigate the transferability of this concept for the Nordend district of Frankfurt, a communication and marketing concept will be developed and the transfer of the concept already applied in Darmstadt will be tested for the first time and regional modification requirements will be identified.

In the "Wasteland" educational project, bulky waste serves as a valuable material resource for the construction of musical instruments at the Museumsuferfest in August 2022. Student assistants from the BüroN led children in crafting and talked to them and their parents about sustainability. Parents and other adults were able to take part in the sustainability quiz and take home a small prize as an "incentive for sustainability" if they named the correct solution word.

As species extinction is one of the greatest challenges for future generations and life on earth alongside climate change, we are addressing the issues of campus greening and increasing biodiversity on campus. This includes, for example, the establishment of bee colonies, the installation of insect hotels and the unsealing of surfaces. Students have dealt with this topic in courses of the Interdisciplinary General Studies (ISG) in the teaching module "Sustainability Strategy of Frankfurt UAS - think globally, act locally", among others, but also drafts from other courses dealt with the topic of campus greening and increasing biodiversity. These drafts and ideas, as well as suggestions from the company suggestion scheme (BVW) and individual measures from the list of 111+ measures, are being incorporated into a study on campus greening and increasing biodiversity. The study explores the options for greening the outdoor areas, including the facades. The aim is to increase biodiversity on the campus and show potential for desilting, while still guaranteeing functional and building law requirements.