The future of sustainable architecture is fused with the ancestral knowledge of the past. Often undocumented, ancestral practices remain unexplored in the rapidly advancing field of biomaterial technology and bio-based building construction. Reminiscent of the modernist American residential case study house experiments which ran from 1945-1966, though designed in stark contrast to their industrial materiality. The Lo–TEK Case Study House Series is a globally generative initiative inspired by ancestrally thatched, bio-based buildings, hybridized with innovative, architectural systems. Thatched housing is a global phenomenon that can be found in many localities across Europe, UK, Asia, Africa and South America. 

 

THUS series pays homage to innovative biomaterials, ancient knowledge, regenerative practices, and oral knowledge sharing— protecting the intellectual property passed from thatcher to architect using an oath-based smart contract encoded to the blockchain. The Lo—TEK Case Study House for the Winter 2025/Spring 2026 “Land and Soil” exhibition will be located in the park north of the K21 Dusseldorf Museum in Germany, overlooking the lake.  As an exploration of radical indigenism. This philosophy is exemplified by the hybridization of the indigenous Danish seagrass thatching with contemporary German code. 

 

Around twenty international artists and collectives explore various models of resource governance—from Indigenous societies to utopian blockchain projects. The core issue of the exhibition is the administration of land. Why are rents so high in Düsseldorf and other cities? How can the Amazon be preserved as the Earth‘s green lung? The exhibition examines the ground on which the K21 stands, both historically and geographically, and invites visitors to participate in the design of a sustainable and just future.

 

Seagrass is a rot resistant, fire resistant, CO2 neutral material with potential to transform the global building industry. However, only 5 people are trained to thatch with it in Europe and only two seagrass farmers remain in Denmark. THUS will preserve the knowledge and craft of seagrass construction from seabed to structure and provide a roadmap to working with local biobased resources and integrating traditional materials like seagrass back into contemporary architecture and design. By using the previously unpublished and understudied Mønsk gable thatching technique, we will apply seagrass thatch vertically to the construction.