For the first time, an international student visited the Department of Architecture as part of the TUM Practical Research Experience Program (TUM PREP) during the summer semester 2017: Aboubacar Komara is a senior architecture undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley and spent 10 weeks at the TU Munich. He participated in the research project "Adaptive and Autoreactive Facades" under the supervision of Dr. Philipp Molter at the Associate Professorship of Architectural Design and Building Envelope.
Aboubacar Komara was born in Guinea, West Africa, where he lived until the year 2013. Before he started studying at UC Berkeley, he attended the Pasadena City College and the Antelope Valley College in California. Aboubacar, who speaks six different languages, had known for a long time that he would like to study architecture: "In fact, my love for Architecture started around two decades ago when I spent a lot of time with my father at his job as a civil engineer at a construction company in Guinea, as he spent most of the time figuring out how different building plans should work. I was always happy to be around my father and I thought what he was doing was interesting, although I did not have any clue of what he was doing most of the time. Then I grew up wanting to do the same thing." Nevertheless, Aboubacar didn't want to fully follow in the footsteps of his father, as he explains further: "But at the opposite of him I wanted to be the person in charge of creating the plans, not only correcting them."
Aboubacar decided to apply for the PREP program because he was very interested in perceiving new perspectives in the field of architecture and in experiencing urban design and development of European cities as well as the Munich school of architecture. Aboubacar joined a project on "Adaptive and Autoreactive Facades" at the Associate Professorship of Architectural Design and Building Envelope during his stay. This research project is led by Philipp Lionel Molter and explores the potentials of autoreactive materials and components as actuators for unpowered adaptive building envelopes in order to control indoor comfort parameters. Just recently, one successful result of the project "flexcover" could be announced: a self-regulating window which opens and closes autoreactively and without additional energy were developed.
Aboubacar especially supported this project regarding a future publication on the subject. Additionally, he was in charge of the detailed drawings and the production of physical models for testing as well as for presentation at fairs and dissemination of the research. At the end of his stay at the Department, Aboubacar emphasizes his interest in the topic of building envelopes and explains how much he enjoyed his first practical research knowledge experiencing by the PREP stay: "Spending my summer at the TU Munich was an amazing experience and I believe will surely impact my growth in the field of architecture."
TUM PREP (TUM Practical Research Experience Program) is an 10-week program that runs over the course of the summer. Excellent North American students are invited to apply for the PREP Program and to participate in a research project under the supervision of a TUM faculty member. PREP participants will build up and further refine their research skills, learn more about the specifics of the German higher education and research landscape, and become members of the diverse scientific community at Germany's top-ranked technical university. The Department of Architecture of the TU Munich highly encourages students from North America to apply for the program!
Credits: Sophia Pritscher, Department of Architecture
https://www.ar.tum.de/en/news/singleview-en/article/first-prep-student-at-the-department/