ECDF launches its first
Research Circle: Building cities with wood, guided by data and AI

The Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF) has launched its first Research Circle. Under the title "Conscious City – Biogenic Urban Construction", the project investigates how data science and artificial intelligence can help scale up timber construction in Berlin, starting with GDR-era housing blocks in Pankow. 

The Research Circle is led by Prof. em. Raoul Bunschoten, ECDF Associate Researcher, and supported by ECDF Professor Andrea Cominola, Chair of Digital Water Systems at TU Berlin. It is funded by Berliner Sparkasse and Viessmann, with additional ECDF matching funds.

A construction problem with a systemic cause

„Berlin needs more than 200,000 new housing units over the next decade, more than 20,000 of them in the district of Pankow. At the same time, the building sector must cut its emissions. Engineered timber is prefabricated, renewable and stores carbon, which makes it a promising material for low-emission, modular construction in dense urban areas“, explains Raoul Bunschoten.

According to the project team, its use is held back less by the material itself than by fragmentation: data is siloed, planning tools are incompatible and shared standards are lacking. Fragmented planning also drives up costs, for example through financing during construction or rent losses during retrofits, which conventional project models rarely capture.

Value Chain Digital Model – One digital model for the whole value chain

At the centre of the project is the Value Chain Digital Model (VCDM), which will be developed based on earlier work with the Fraunhofer Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology and Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research 
Wilhelm-Klauditz-Institut WKI under Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Kohl (TU Berlin). It links material flows, planning data, environmental metrics and stakeholder input in one environment. The Research Circle will develop it into a decision-support tool that models time, cost and carbon together across the Forest-to-City / City-to-Forest value chain.

AI is to play a supporting role: its modules will help classify building typologies, match suitable timber-extension configurations and forecast the carbon, cost, and time effects of design and production choices. The project explicitly aims to keep people in control. It will define who can intervene, which decisions may be automated, and what must remain explainable to architects and urban planners.

Test case: timber extensions on GDR-era housing blocks

The approach will be applied to vertical timber extensions of prefabricated housing blocks from the GDR era, a building type found across Germany and other European cities. Berlin-Pankow serves as the initial testbed. As a core output of the project, the team will build an urban simulation environment to compare retrofit and densification scenarios for carbon, cost, construction time and logistics, and to interactively evaluate them with public and private stakeholders.

Four work packages, three outcomes

The project follows a Design Science Research approach across four work packages: (i) a scalable typology and component system, (ii) the integrated VCDM, (iii) AI-supported coordination and human-centred control, and (iv) the Pankow demonstrator with stakeholder validation. It aims to deliver an IFC-compatible (Industry Foundation Classes)-based component system, an integrated VCDM infrastructure, and a simulation environment for strategic planning and investment decisions. Where feasible, results will be shared in reusable formats such as IFC/Revit component libraries, dashboards and simulation models.