Ferdinand Ludwig
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ferdinand Ludwig is a German architect and the head of the professorship for Green Technologies in Landscape Architecture at the Technical University of Munich.[1] Ludwig is a pioneer of and innovator in the field of Baubotanik, the architectural realm of living plant construction.[1]
Ludwig began as an architecture student and graduated from the University of Stuttgart in 2012 with a dissertation titled “The Botanical Fundamentals of Baubotanik and their Application in Design”.[1] In 2005 he along with Hannes Schwertfeger and Oliver Storz build planting they referred to as “Baubotanik buildings” [2] In 2007, he co-founded the research group “Baubotanik” at the University of Stuttgart's Institute of Architectural Theory and Design (IGMA) and served as a head research associate until 2017.[3] Along with Daniel Schönle in 2010, Ludwig created “ludwig.schönle: Baubotanik - Architecture - Urbanism”, a collaborative office centering on incorporating the baubotanik approach in urban planning and architectural design.[1] Ludwig has designed and created numerous Baubotanik projects around Germany, such as the Plane-Tree-Cube in Nagold in 2012, a Baubotanik Tower in 2009, and a Baubotanik Footbridge in 2005.[4][5][6]
The central focus of Ludwig's research concerns integrating the growth processes of living plants into architectural design and construction.[7][1] The plan is to build a structure suitable to guide the trees growth into the desired form.[2] Merging living plants with architectural construction allows for the exploration [2] of the creative and functional uses of plants in the context of building engineering.[8][9] The concept of Baubotanik is not only relevant in the fields of architecture and landscape architecture, but has increasingly been recognized as an adaptation method to climate change.[3][9] Ludwig's work additionally centers on the technical challenges that arise in Baubotanik, thereby broadening architectural knowledge by confronting aspects of growth and decay, and probability and chance in architectural design.[1]
Awards
- Prize for bold science, Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the State of Baden-Württemberg (2016)[1][10]
- Prize for exceptional scientific achievements, University of Stuttgart (2013)[10]
- Named a “Maker of Tomorrow” by the Minister of the Environment, Climate Protection and the Energy Sector Baden-Württemberg (2012)[1]
- The Plane-Tree-Cube in Nagold was given the “Special Prize for Innovation” at “Holzbaupreis Baden-Württemberg 2012.” [2]
