Partners and outreach
Carole Schmit
Architect, Project Initiator and Coordinator
Carole Schmit is Guest Professor of Architecture at the University of Luxembourg and works at the same time in her office Polaris architects. For about 22 years she has developed design and research projects based on influences related to street culture, conceptual art and anthropological studies. Over the time her concern for ecology and material sciences within design practice have added more layers to her work. Together with her partner François Thiry, she developed ideas such as The Threatened City, a dystopian projection due to the consequences of climate change on European cities, the Ordos Effect, a storytelling phenomenon based on communication devices far more
powerful than the past Bilbao-effect, The Territorial Opportunism, describing the dynamic spaces around borders, sort of spatial pockets that are crossed by daily commuters. Her designwork has been published in different magazines such as Wall Street Journal (New York), New York Times, (New York), Paisea (Valencia, Spain), Mark (Netherlands), Contemporary (London), Technique et architecture (Paris), Arch+ (Suisse), A10 (Germany), A+ (Bruxelles), Abitare (Milano), Arhitectura (Bucarest), DDO (Lille) and different media in Asia-Pacific. She has published articles about art, architecture and urbanism in international and local media. She contributed to the editions of Mutations with the project USE – Uncertain States of Europe with Multiplicity published by Actar (Barcelona) in 2000, or Unseen I slipped away with Maurice Nio published by 010 (Rotterdam) in 2003, or Our House published by Maison Moderne (Luxembourg) in 2014. More recently she steered Petite Maison, a project on behalf of the university in the framework of Esch cultural capital 2022. Design projects and recent publications
are on:
http://www.polaris.lu
Dragos Ghioca
Architect, Research and Development
Dragos Ghioca is an architect currently conducting research at the ETH Zurich. After graduating the Master Program in Architecture at the University of Luxembourg in 2019, he gained professional experience in architectural offices located in Luxembourg. From 2021 to 2023 he joined Prof. Carole Schmit at the University of Luxembourg to assist the research and the development of Petite Maison project which was part of the European Capital of Culture program. Since October 2023, he has assumed the role of Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Technology in Architecture of ETH Zurich, focusing his research on the potential reutilization of the active construction components in Switzerland.
Christoph Odenbreit
Full Professor in Steel and Composite Structures – ArcelorMittal Chair of Steel Construction
Christoph Odenbreit is full Professor at the University of Luxembourg since 2003. In 2011 became the holder of the ArcelorMittal Chair of Steel Construction. The team is focusing its expertise on the following notable topics:
(i) Sustainability and circularity in steel and steel composite structures by promoting structural solutions for steel and steel composite and circularity to contribute to the “European Commission´s Green Deal” by helping the construction sector reducing the CO2 emissions. RFCS Research Project “REDUCE” intended to bring contribution to the Green Deal with the development of dismountable, reusable, modular and standardized structural elements and the respective Lego-like system. The REDUCE system is currently being implemented in the “Petite Maison” concept.
(ii) Joints, connections and shear force transfer between concrete and steel, timber and steel. Several topics are to be mentioned on this topic
- The research project, “MultiCoSteel” focused on the investigation of the validity of the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory for steel-concrete composite columns with multiple encased steel profiles and transition towards Vierendeel truss model.
- The industrial fellowship FNR Project “Prefa-SeTi” project develops demountable and reusable steel-timber compo-site solutions for a circular economy, using LVL panels, while Industrial financed Project “SeTi-2” is focused on the investigation of the minimum degree of shear connections for demountable steel timber shear connections .Such topics are not covered by Eurocode 4.
- The synergy between the structural and sustainability investigations is approached through CoCo Project [49]. It is a forecast projection for different scenarios in the construction market concerning climate change potential with the purpose to show that steel timber composite solution is competitive.
- RFCS project CONNECT4C is focused on developing ready-to-use, standardized solutions for demountable, reusable and adaptable 3D connections, taking advantage of the enhanced performance of high steel grades. The project will promote a circular economy in the steel construction industry, thus leading to significant environmental savings through life-cycle thinking and digitalization, while maintaining the competitiveness of the European Economy.
Links
https://esch2022.uni.lu/projects/petite-maison/
http://www.masterarchitecture.lu/Petite-Maison–Esch22_109_0.html
https://www.agora.lu/petite-maison-belval-architecture-circulaire/
https://economie-circulaire.public.lu/fr/inpractice/projects/petite-maison.html
https://paperjam.lu/article/petite-maison-projet-exemplair
https://lequotidien.lu/a-la-une/belval-une-petite-maison-pour-de-grandes-ambitions/
https://www.infogreen.lu/la-petite-maison-dans-le-champ-des-possibles.html