Within an interdisciplinary consortium, ETH Zürich, Empa, HSLU, BFH, OST, and more than 40 industry partners are collaborating across ten sub-projects. These are positioned along the entire value chain in the construction sector - from raw-material extraction and processing, to fabrication and use, and finally end-of-life pathways such as recycling and disposal. A central focus lies on timber reuse, the development of industrial clay-based building materials, and innovative hybrid construction approaches that combine the strengths of both materials - such as load-bearing capacity, thermal mass, and a healthy indoor climate.
The Institute of Civil Engineering (IBI) places a strong emphasis on clay construction and aims to further develop into a competence centre for earthen construction methods and earth-based materials. In the relevant Think Earth sub-projects, these materials are systematically investigated and advanced with the goal of characterising key material properties, developing constructive and conceptual fundamentals, and creating new design and verification methods. The Institute also supports practice through service projects, for example by testing or monitoring clay mixes and clay-based materials . Valuable experience has been gained in pilot projects such as the Manal Pavilion on the HSLU campus in Horw. Projects of this kind demonstrate the potential of earth-based materials and show what resource-efficient structures can look like in practice - helping pave the way toward climate-neutral construction at scale.
