exhibition

the IBA seven years in the making the exhibition wasn't just about showcasing

innovative buildings it was about regeneration of a relatively poor

neighborhood in the city

with sustainable living in mind

The real excess will be visible

let me say in 5 or 7 years but

until now, today, I can't say we are

more successful than I would have expected for today

So what innovation was showcased here

that made it such a success?

Well first up there was Wood Cube

a five-story carbon-neutral apartment block constructed almost entirely from

wood

and gets its power solely from photovoltaic panels

wood has a new boom, a new career,

as a construction material

we find five

different wood houses with completely different

technologies but all based on wood and this is of course very interesting for

the different construction firms to see

how people respond to these different

materials to these different technologies

and so I think we will see in future

which materials which technologies

would succeed and move which will fail

And finally the IBA showcased a world first

BIQ, a building with its own

bio-reactor the runs entirely off Algae

the sun-facing sides of this structure are covered with water tanks where algae bask in

the light

what happens next is truely innovative The system's designer

Martin Kerner gives an inside look at his groundbreaking bio-reactor

What we produce here in this vessel is to burn

bio-gas and reproduce our flue-gas

and the flue-gas contains CO2 and the CO2

is transfered in to our culture medium

by these situation devices

so we saturate the water with flue gas with CO2

and then transfer it back into our bio-reactor facade

so that the algae can take up the CO2 with this

device over here we add nutrients

that means mainly nitrogen and phosphorous to our culture medium

with these large tubes over there at the roof

me take all the heat from the culture medium

and transfer it into our heating system of the house

But it isn't just heating

that micro-organisms can produce this reactor can also farm excess amounts of algae

that can be harvested for an entirely different reason

This is rich in

and proteins, its rich in unsaturated fatty acid, it contains

vitamins, minerals, and so on, so it's physiologically very

positive and we would like to make

food and feed for animals out of this biomass

So this bio-reactor has the capability of not only heating our homes

but also of feeding our livestock