elegant embellishments is a research and design manufacturing studio based in Berlin that creates architectural elements and buildings with a beneficial, active impact on their environment. It pioneered the Maker Library Network in Germany, running a month of events throughout June 2015 as part of Berlin’s Urban Architectural Festival Make City. elegant embellishments installed a pop-up Maker Library at the entrance of its space, where it displayed examples of work and a specialist selection of books on smart materials and sustainable architecture. It also hosted a dozen of talks and workshops, inviting innovative makers to meet and share knowledge within the studio. Topics debated included the relationship between craft and data, with Cecilia Palmer; the role of making in immersive technologies, with Miho Tanaka, and trends for the future of transport, with Michel David. The studio’s inspiring work has been exhibited in Maker Library Network exhibitions in Poland and Germany.

Who is involved? 

Maker Librarians Allison Dring and Daniel Schwaag show a proactive interest in sustainability and digital fabrication in urban contexts. They invent smart surfaces that break down and neutralise pollution particles, while contributing to the appeal of a building. Their goal is to turn innovative ideas into catalogue-ready building products for all to use, such as the smog-eating Prosolve Facade tiles in use on a Mexican hospital (a unit was exhibited in the Maker Library Fixhub in Lodz, Poland in October 2014.) The Biochar Tiles, which are made of waste CO2, were shown at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery, Germany in June 2015.