ABSTRACT
Wolf Hilbertz, a pioneer in building with unusual natural materials that grow themselves (what he termed “cybertecture”), tirelessly visited islands all around the world, seeking ways to save them from the impacts of global climate change� Wolf was born in 1938, and, after a childhood as a refugee, grew up in Detmold, Germany� Leaving high school before graduating to work as a laborer, he quickly realized he was wasting his time and enrolled in architecture at the Hochschule fur Kunste (College of Arts) in Berlin� Interested in novel materials, he submitted a thesis on building with plastic, which was immediately rejected on grounds that no one had heard of such an outrageous thing�
In 1965, he moved to New York, where an uncle, Max Urbahn, was an architect� He presented his rejected Berlin thesis to the Admissions Office at the University of Michigan, which promptly accepted him to pursue his graduate degree in architecture� A special influence was the laser group at the university, who were developing the first holograms, and Wolf quickly developed applications for laser-controlled design and machining of objects, which later became integrated into computercontrolled fabrication methods� Wolf said later that if they had thought to patent their work at the time, they would have been fabulously rich�
Wolf then moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he founded the architecture department at a small Black college, Southern University� His students could not stay with him in motels on field trips in the racially segregated South, so Wolf traveled with his students by bus and stayed in the colored sections of town� When funding ran out for the architecture program at Southern University, Wolf was offered a faculty position at the University of Texas in Austin, where he became professor of architecture� This led to the remarkable Ice City Project in Fargo, North Dakota, during January 1973 using computer-controlled nozzles to spray water in subfreezing temperature to build domelike houses grown from ice� The concept was flawless in principle, working well at first, but the
CONTENTS
Dedication ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1 For More Information ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������4
weather did not cooperate, and the warmest winter on record (to that time) melted down the Ice City as fast as his team of students could build it, working nonstop�
Inspired by the fact that corals and snails make their skeletons and shells from chemicals dissolved in seawater, Wolf saw that if limestone could be grown out of seawater in precisely controlled forms, construction material could be made in any size or shape, and whole islands could be grown in the sea� Wolf and his students began using low-voltage direct current to cause electrolysis of seawater to grow limestone structures at sites along the Texas and Louisiana coasts�
The growth rate of the material they produced in arches, blocks, cylinders, and other forms depends on the salt content of the water� It grew fast in salty lagoons of southern Texas and more slowly in muddy Louisiana mixed with Mississippi River water� But it grew very hard and was rapidly overgrown by oysters, which quickly covered the structures with layer upon layer of shells, a technique now being used for restoring oyster reefs� The first applications were protecting deteriorating wood or concrete structures by replacing them with stronger minerals� These were not only growing but also actually self-repairing, with physically damaged areas growing right back�
Wolf quickly found his way to the tropical islands (Figure 1�1), where his ideas were to achieve their greatest value� Solar-and wind-powered projects were set up in St� Croix in the Virgin Islands in 1976� These worked remarkably well for a while, with nearby coral growing along and over them, but were soon destroyed by a hurricane� The same happened to a large solar-and wind-powered project in Louisiana� With available funding exhausted, and realizing that no one would believe that large, strong structures could be economically grown in seawater unless they could see it themselves, he launched pilot projects in an astonishing variety of locations, anyplace people would let him, including Santa Catalina Island off the coast of California, the Cayman Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Cartagena in Colombia, Isla Margarita in Venezuela, Majorca, Ireland, and many others, even thousands of feet down in the Cayman Trench, and north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska and Norway�
Success followed success in terms of technical results, but money failed to follow because potential funders failed to see the possibilities or were not willing to wait for years to grow the limestone, which was strongest when grown at no more than 1-2 cm per year� His first patents, on what he called “Seacrete” or “Seament,” made no money because he was cheated by his financial partner, who, unknown to him until later, turned out to be a disbarred lawyer convicted of cattle rustling in Oklahoma� In the 1970s, By chance invitation, Wolf sailed on a small yacht from Texas to the southernmost Caribbean, the San Blas Islands of Panama� There, he saw the Kuna Indians living on islands that they had painstakingly built on top of sandy reef flats, mining the corals from the reef to build their islands one coral head at a time� Wolf was astonished to see people who had preserved their ancient traditions untouched and was inspired by their mastery at building islands in the sea from living material� He also realized that the impacts on the reefs had been small when there were few people and many corals, but this had changed when the people became many, the corals became few, and the lobster and crabs and fish were disappearing the way the manatee and turtles already had� Wolf also saw that they could grow their own islands, using solar energy to produce the material that by now he had begun to call “Mineral Accretion,” but he could not find the funding to get back until chance again intervened decades later�
In 1987, the author of this memoriam heard of Wolf’s work and, after a trial experiment at the Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory, invited Wolf to come to Jamaica and collaborate on applications toward protecting coral reefs� Within months, corals were found to grow up to three to five times faster than normal, along with large amounts of white limestone sand-producing “calcareous” algae� Wolf and I then worked together as closest colleagues for 20 years, until his death� We again renamed the mineral material “Biorock,” or living stone, because this better conveyed what the process was all about�
In the last 20 years of his life, Wolf, myself, and a constantly growing group of students and colleagues proceeded to build coral-reef restoration projects at many locations in Jamaica, Panama, Turks and Caicos Islands, Mexico, St� Maarten, Tobago, Cuba, Thailand, Seychelles, Maldives, Saya de Malha, India, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Dubai, Qatar, Corsica, Indonesia, Philippines, Palau, Marshall Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Bahamas, and the United States� The range of projects and habitats are far too extensive to be described here, except for an exceptional few� The project in Pemuteran, Bali, is the world’s largest coral-reef restoration project, with more than 80 Biorock reefs totaling more than half a kilometer in length� Similar projects in other parts of Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand are working with community-based fisheries management programs to restore the nearly destroyed fisheries habitat and restocking them with fast-growing corals, fish, and shellfish� These projects have been winners of many Indonesian and international ecotourism awards because they have taken formerly devastated areas and rapidly turned them into flourishing coral reefs packed with fish� In the Maldives, Biorock corals had a 16-50 times higher survival rate than nearby reefs after the record heat of 1998 and kept corals and fish alive that vanished elsewhere� A Biorock reef turned a severely eroding Maldives beach into 15 m growth of sand in a few years� In the Saya de Malha Banks, a huge shallow bank in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a floating solar-powered raft powered coral-restoration projects on the sea floor below� In Helen Reef, Palau, they built a solar-powered coral reef to protect the tiny island from eroding� And Wolf was finally able to return to the San Blas Islands in Panama and work with Kuna Indians and Panamanians to grow solar-powered coral reefs and fish and lobster habitat�
Wolf was larger than life in his remarkable career, embracing the possibilities to the fullest� His pioneering work in Cybertecture brought fame and followers, but not fortune� He tirelessly taught and promoted the new field he had conceptually created, which he called “Seascaping,” the science and art of marine environmental restoration, growing reefs, and creating new habitat where it had disappeared and even where it had never been before� His wide network of loyal friends valued his genius as an innovator of a new, living, growing architecture, using the sea, “the world’s largest mine,” as he called it, and he inspired students around the world� He was not simply a revolutionary
designer using novel growing materials, but he was also a builder, artist, and sculptor who built with his bare hands and understood that craft was as important as vision�
It is said, “A genius is someone who shoots at a target no one else can see, and hits it�” Wolf did this again and again, but too often the crowd around never even noticed that the target had been hit, and long-term funding proved impossible to find� Wolf never despaired; he knew he was doing the right thing, doing the most he possibly could in areas where he had to lead alone and hope others would follow� He always clung to “das Prinzip du Hoffnung,” the principle of hope, that the importance of his innovations would be recognized in time to free him to explore their potentials to the fullest while he still had the time� Sadly, that failed to materialize, but Wolf kept leading and inspiring to the end, always saying, “Onward through the fog!” and “Hope dies last,” and remembering Martin Luther’s saying that “even if I knew the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple seeds today�”
Wolf left behind five remarkable children, Kai (architect and computer expert, Munich), Derrick (artist and musician, New York), Halona (artist and musician, New York), Navassa (artist and fashion designer, Los Angeles), and Alissa (student, Berlin), with three wonderful and inspiring wives, Regina Piper (publisher, editor, Munich), Frances Carvey (Galveston, Texas), and Ursula Rommerskirchen (diplomat, Berlin)� In his last 20 years, Wolf’s work was mainly supported by his wife, “Uschi�” Her assignments as a diplomat for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs led them from Texas to Boston, Montreal, Ireland, Bangkok, and finally Dubai� From these bases, Wolf traveled tirelessly to islands around the world, starting coral-reef and fisheries restoration projects wherever people really cared to bring their dying reefs back� Wolf left the world a dazzling array of Biorock projects and a global network of colleagues committed to seeing his work continued and to be greatly expanded as urgently as possible as a critical tool to preserve, restore, and enhance our environment against global warming and sea level rise in the future� His body failed him on August 11, 2007, but his legacy keeps growing (Figure 1�2)�
FOR MORE INFORMATION
