Session Chair: Jan Knippers

Jan Knippers specialises in lightweight structures for roofs and façades, as well as the use of innovative materials such as glass-fibre reinforced polymers. He is partner and co-founder of Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering with offices in Stuttgart (since 2001), New York City (since 2009) and Berlin (since 2014). The focus of their work is on efficient structural design for international and architecturally demanding projects. Since 2000 Jan Knippers is head of the Institute for Building Structures and Structural Design (itke) at the faculty for architecture and urban design at the University of Stuttgart and involved in many research projects on fiber based materials and biomimetics in architecture. As such he is speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Biological Design and Integrative Structures’ funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and author of numerous publications such as the ‘Construction Manual for Polymers and Membranes’. Jan Knippers completed his studies of civil engineering at the Technical University of Berlin in 1992 with the award of a PhD.