Article in DER SPIEGEL 23/2019: Link
Article in Rheinpfalz: Link
6.2.2019, Kaiserslautern: Wooden 5G smart poles to Kaiserslautern as the first city in the world?
The streets of Kaiserslautern may soon be equipped with wooden 5G network base stations, so called “smart poles”, designed by TU Kaiserslautern students. The students got the chance to visualize what the streets of the future will look like and designed their own models of an eco-friendly wooden 5G base station.
Developing these innovative, aesthetic wooden smart poles is a joint project of the Digital Timber Construction laboratory at the TU Kaiserslautern, led by Professor Christopher Robeller, and Ecotelligent Ltd., a Finnish company specialised in designing and building environmentally friendly wooden-structured telecommunication masts and towers from Finnish wood material.
5G networks will soon be introduced into our cities, providing larger data transmission capacity
and enabling e.g. the use of different sensor systems for smart traffic and other technological advancements. However, smart cities need to figure out how to take into account the environmental impact as well as the aesthetics of the urban environment when building 5G technology that requires a dense network of base stations.
Wood is an ideal material for building smart poles with low carbon footprint, and this is what EcoTelligent has been developing in the “5G Smart Pole to Smart Cities” project. Now the aesthetic side was tackled by professor Robeller’s 3rd year architecture students, who visualized freely what the streets of the future will look like. Each student / group developed their model of an innovative, aesthetic 5G base station where the modern technology will “live and hide”.
All the designs by the students were outstanding! Three best designs were chosen to be further developed by our company and potentially adopted into use throughout the world when the 5G networks start to emerge, Gyöngyi Mátray, the CEO of EcoTelligent rejoices.
Now the city of Kaiserslautern would like to realize the students’ designs on the streets of Kaiserslautern. This will be further negotiated with the Digital Timber Construction laboratory, EcoTelligent Ltd. and the KL.digital GmbH, IT company of the city of Kaiserslautern. The citizens of Kaiserslautern will have a chance to vote on their favourite design of the three options in the summer of 2019.
By building wooden base stations instead of putting up steel towers, the carbon emissions occurred in the building process of new network systems can be dramatically reduced. The impact is even greater when even large wood structures can be joined through their form instead of using steel connectors such as nails and screws – this type of modern joinery with the help of automatic joinery machines is what the Digital Timber Construction laboratory studies and something that companies like EcoTelligent could use in the wooden products.
DTC Students:
Alica Clemens, Anna Hugot, Antonia Wern, Julian Lengert, Michelle Eickert, Sarah Welker, Philipp Karasek, Dario Smigulan, Philipp Latzko, Tobias Kübler, Lukas Gerstle, Fabrice Iradukunda, Denis-Dirk Mc Cracken, Sören Rathgeber, Allper Sefer, Jonas Küpper, Philip Becker, Luca Michels
DTC Project Partners:
Gyöngyi Mátray, CEO
EcoTelligent Ltd.
www.ecotelligent.fi
+358 50 355 0905
Dr. Martin Verlage
KL.digital GmbH
www.herzlich-digital.de
+49 631 205 894 70