Tex­tile float­ing islands: stu­dents devel­op innov­a­tion for the city of the future

In just ten weeks, nine Bachelor’s and Master’s stu­dents put their ideas into prac­tice. The aim of the pro­ject was to com­bine plants, tex­tiles and tech­no­logy in order to fur­ther devel­op so-called ​“blue-green infra­struc­ture” – nat­ur­al ele­ments in cit­ies such as parks, green roofs or rain­wa­ter reser­voirs that con­trib­ute to the qual­ity of life in addi­tion to their function.

Fil­ter­ing rain­wa­ter, grow­ing crops

The pro­ject was super­vised by Dr. Har­vey Har­bach from the university’s Insti­tute for Sus­tain­able Water Sys­tems (inwa). His research group has been devel­op­ing float­ing islands for years that do more than just look good:

We want to design rain­wa­ter reten­tion basins in such a way that they not only store water, but also clean it – and can even sup­port plants for food or anim­al feed pro­duc­tion.” — Dr. Har­vey Harbach

The pro­ject used a spe­cial tex­tile that can puri­fy the water and reduce water pol­lu­tion. The stu­dents grew water­cress from seeds, tested the mater­i­als in the labor­at­ory, developed float­ing bod­ies using a 3D print­er and tested their designs in real bod­ies of water. They were sup­por­ted by tech­ni­cians from the uni­ver­sity and the mod­ern equip­ment in the Maker­Space, the work­shop for invent­ors and developers on the Hof Uni­ver­sity cam­pus, as well as the labor­at­or­ies at the Münch­berg site.

Team­work meets invent­ive spirit

The pro­ject was car­ried out as part of the ​“Man­age­ment of Pro­ject Groups” and ​“Pro­ject Man­age­ment Basics” mod­ules at Hof Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences and was organ­ized into three teams – for plant­ing sys­tems, tex­tile com­pon­ents and floats. Each group star­ted with inde­pend­ent research. In the design phase, the ideas were bundled, crit­ic­ally scru­tin­ized and brought togeth­er. In the prac­tic­al imple­ment­a­tion phase, it quickly became clear: the­ory is one thing, but how does a 3D-prin­ted ele­ment react to water? Which tex­tile meets the require­ments in terms of per­meab­il­ity, sta­bil­ity and envir­on­ment­al com­pat­ib­il­ity? And how stable does a planted island actu­ally float?

“We have learned that suc­cess­ful team­work doesn’t mean doing everything togeth­er – it means com­ing togeth­er in a well-coordin­ated way at the right time.” — Aleka Briese, pro­ject manager

Dr. Har­bach is also delighted with the stu­dents’ success:

I’m thrilled with how much skill and know­ledge our stu­dents bring to their stud­ies – and how they devel­op these skills in the pro­ject. This is exactly what we need in prac­tice.” — Dr. Har­vey Harbach

The second, smal­ler float­ing island is cur­rently being fur­ther invest­ig­ated in the labor­at­ory – with the aim of being able to be used in oth­er cit­ies in the future.