LAVA - Laboratory for Visionary Architecture

Chris Bosse, Tobias Wallisser and Alexander Rieck founded LAVA in 2007. It was established as a network of creative minds with a research and design focus and has offices in Sydney, Shanghai, Stuttgart and Abu Dhabi. LAVA explores frontiers that merge future technologies with the patterns of organisation found in nature and believes this will result in a smarter, friendlier, more socially and environmentally responsible future. The potential for naturally evolving systems such as snowflakes, spider webs and soap bubbles for new building typologies and structures has continued to fascinate LAVA – the geometries in nature create both efficiency and beauty. But above all the human is the centre of their investigations. LAVA combines digital workflow, nature’s structural principles and the latest digital fabrication technologies with the aim of achieving MORE WITH LESS: more (architecture) with less (material/ energy/time/cost). Structure, material and building skin are three areas LAVA believes that architecture can learn so much from nature. Projects incorporate intelligent systems and skins that can react to external influences such as air pressure, temperature, humidity, solar-radiation and pollution. LAVA designs everything from pop up installations to master-plans and urban centres, from homes made out of PET bottles to ‘reskinning’ aging 60s icons, from furniture to hotels, houses and airports of the future.