KAISERSROT is a collaboration of researchers and developers in the field of architecture, urban design and (computational-) technology.

It is based at the Chair of CAAD, Prof. Ludger Hovestadt at the ETH in Zürich. The objective is an integrative research out of these three disciplines. The work also consists of practical projects on our own or in cooperation with other architectural offices. Recent project-partners were the architects Herzog&deMeuron in Basel, Sauerbruch&Hutton in Berlin and KCAP in Rotterdam. In 2008, KAISERSROT becomes a Start-Up-Company.

With this closely tied collaboration we combine the potentials of new technologies in production, simulation and generating of material with its application in the context of urban design and architecture. According to our belief today’s understanding of urbanism with its emerging complexity cannot work without applying new (computational-) techniques to the interpretation and production of urban material.

The projects will explore the dynamic relationship between architecture and urbanism (urban design). Traditionally Urban Design is considered as the enabler of architecture. Both systems usually run on different scales and are connected via hierachical relations. The aim is to get rid of those classifications which hinder the necessary feedback process to improve both the architectural freedom and the quality of the urban design. The resulting horizontalized system is characterized by the specification of relationships between parts, while satisfying the overall balance. Such ‘one for all – all for one’ strategies contain a high level of complexity in terms of dataflow, as many processes run simultaneously and not as in traditional practice one after the other. The emerging negotiations between the huge amount of elements require the computer as a tool to run all these algorithms at the same time in order to synthesize and synchronize them. One result out of many variations might emerge, when the system of negotiations reaches for an equilibrium – all elements have a stable position with their given parameters. The objective of a dynamic planning and simulation tool is implemented by designing not the actual form but the rules which constrain it. Well formulated rules allow for a certain degree of freedom for the element to transform, move or change in whatever way, as a rule is always specific and never covers the whole range of the element’s definition.

This ‘newly new urbanism’ will be object-oriented, not territorial; it will use techniques of extrapolation, exchange, prediction, dispersion and networking. The design technique lies in the precise framing of a piece of reality.