Wolf Hilbertz

Wolf Hilbertz in July 2005

Wolf Hartmut Hilbertz (born April 16, 1938 in Gütersloh ; † August 11, 2007 in Munich ) was a German architect , inventor and marine scientist.

Life

He studied architecture at the Berlin University of the Arts and the University of Michigan . He worked in various architecture offices in Berlin, New York and Detroit.

As a scientist and lecturer, Hilbertz taught at Southern University , McGill University , the University of the Arts Bremen and the University of Texas .

After being at the Southern University and A & M College in Baton Rouge in the US state of Louisiana had operated, he developed the concept of Cybertecture . He was influenced, among others, by Nicholas Negroponte , to whom he later provided suggestions. He then followed a call to the University of Texas at Austin .

There he founded the Responsive Environments Laboratory and the Symbiotic Processes Laboratory , which dealt with the independent construction of buildings in the environment. In the 1970s he visited Bad Salzuflen , where he saw how minerals were formed on scaffolding when water trickled down. Together with his trips from Austin to the Texas Gulf Coast, this gave him the idea of ​​using electrolysis to bring about such processes independently in the ocean . He published his first and most important paper on the subject of "Electrochemical Deposition of Minerals in Sea Water: Experiments and Applications" (Original: Electrodeposition of Minerals in Sea Water: Experiments and Applications) in 1979.

The process, which he developed experimentally, was based on the fact that with direct current on steel frames, which served as cathode and anode, structures made of aragonite and brucite (bruzite) were formed through the appropriate current strengths . He had this process, the Biorock technology , patented. To implement this process, he founded The Marine Resources Co. and was a co-founder of Biorock Inc. He also served as Vice President of the Research of the Global Coral Reef Alliance . In Bremen he participated in the Sun & Sea association .

With the marine biologist Tom J. Goreau , he built artificial coral reefs in various places . It was shown that the marine animals developed faster on the structures formed than on the natural reefs. He started an outstanding project in Bali in the Pemuteran Bay.

Eventually he thought of building an artificial settlement on a structure in the ocean. The place he found was the Saya de Malha Bank in the Indian Ocean. He called the project of the artificial city, which would one day have 50,000 inhabitants, Autopia . The implementation of the project began in 1997. He wanted to generate the energy for the electrolysis on the steel framework from solar cells or wind turbines. He generalized the concept in the term Seascape Architecture .

When he wanted to return to Berlin, he died of lung cancer on August 11, 2007. He was buried in the Wilmersdorf cemetery.

Fonts

• Toward Cybertecture. In: Progressive Architecture. May 1970.
• Marine architecture. To alternative. In: Architectural Science Review. 1976, ISSN  0003-8628 .
• with D. Fletcher and C. Krausse: Mineral accretion technology. Applications for architecture and aquaculture. Industrial Forum, 1977.
• Building Environments That Grow. In: The Futurist. June 1977, pp. 148-149.
• Electrodeposition of Minerals in Sea Water. Experiments and Applications. In: IEEE Journal on Oceanic Engineering. Volume OE-4 (1979), No. 3, pp. 94-113.
• Solar-generated construction material from sea water to mitigate global warming. In: Building Research & Information. Volume 19, Issue 4 July 1991, pp. 242-255.
• Solar-generated building material from seawater as a sink for carbon. Ambio 1992.

Web links

• Wolf Hilbertz's website
• PDF of the original 1979 concept by Wolf Hilbertz, used with the permission of the IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Office (PDF; 11.3 MB)
• Biorock (TM) Technologie website
• Saya de Malha Expedition Report March 2002 Rev. 1 (PDF; 2.2 MB)
• Project of an artificial island in the Indian Ocean. In: Berliner Zeitung , October 23, 2003
• Biorock-Workshop.org: website about Biorock workshops
• Mineral accretion process for building structures in the sea
• Artificial coral reef project in Pemuteran Bay on Bali (PDF; 2.5 MB)
• Photo gallery of the Pemuteran project
• Biorockbali.webs.com: Coral Conservation Project in Karang Lestari, Pemuteran Bay, Bali
• U.S. Patent No. 5,543,034 of 1996
• Biorock Thailand: Non-profit group that works with Biorock technology
• Pemuteranbay.com: Reefs in Pemuteran, Bali - the Biorock reef is number 6

Individual evidence

1. ^ WH Hilbertz: Toward Cybertecture. In: Progressive Architecture. May 1970.
2. ^ WH Hilbertz et al: Electrodeposition of Minerals in Sea Water: Experiments and Applications. In: IEEE, Journal of Oceanic Engineering. Vol. 4, No. 3, July 1979, pp. 94-113.