The UMAR module (Urban Mining and Recycling, that is, the extraction of useful materials from landfills and other urban objects and recycling) is devoted to a hot topic - the overuse of exhaustible resources and environmental pollution, which are characteristic of the construction industry. The solution to the problem can be materials that can be reused or recycled without harming the planet, as well as construction technologies that facilitate such a process (in particular, a simple disassembly of a building into its component parts by type of material when its service life ends). The idea itself is not new (just remember Cradle to Cradle), but its implementation, incl. the choice of specific building materials differ from other similar programs.
The customer was the Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa), based in the Zurich suburb of Dubendorf. They are part of the Zurich Federal School of Technology (ETH Zürich). To accommodate such experimental modules, they have
special building - NEST: a concrete structure designed by architects Gramazio & Kohler. The UMAR module occupied the third floor there: it is both a testing ground for new materials and a real three-room apartment for two students who share their experiences there with researchers.
Werner Sobek and his colleagues from Karlsruhe Dirk Hebel and Felix Heisel base their scheme on the concept of a cycle: each material exists in its own rhythm, at some point it is extracted from it for use in construction, and then returns there after dismantling, and so on.
The structure and a significant part of the UMAR facades are made of wood without any chemical treatment (it would have made it difficult to reuse or recycle this material, for the same reason they did without glue). Copper was also used from the roof of a hotel in Austria and sheets from remelted copper "recyclable". Some of the insulation materials are "grown" from mycelium, some are recycled like bricks, and the carpets are rented. Doorknobs used to be used in a banking building in Brussels, and the curtains are made from fully biodegradable fabric. More about building materials
can be read here.
UMAR was manufactured at the site of the general contractor, the Austrian company Kaufmann Zimmerei & Tischlerei, in the form of seven parts, delivered by truck to Dubendorf and assembled with two cranes in one day.
