Bioinspired and Biobased 4D-Printing for Adaptive Building Facades

Interview with Tiffany Cheng

Tiffany Cheng is a leading researcher in bioinspired fabrication, bridging architecture, biology, and materials science to imagine new possibilities for the built environment.

Currently an Assistant Professor at Cornell University, she brings experience from Harvard, USC, and years of advanced research at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) in Stuttgart, where she led the Material Programming Group.

In this interview ahead of her presentation at CDFAM Amsterdam 2025, Cheng discusses her work on hygromorphic building facades—adaptive systems inspired by plant behavior and built from cellulosic, biobased materials.

The project combines material programming, 4D printing, and computational simulation to develop low-energy, climate-responsive components for architectural envelopes.

We spoke with Cheng about the scientific challenges, design process, and cross-disciplinary collaborations behind this work—and where she sees it going next.

Your presentation at CDFAM in Amsterdam will cover your research into bioinspired and biobased 4D-printing for adaptive building facades. What motivated you to develop this specific system, and what key challenges did you aim to address in its design and function?

I was driven by a fundamental question: What if our buildings and products could be manufactured and operated the way biological systems grow and adapt?

Buildings are responsible for the majority of the world’s carbon emissions because of the high carbon footprint materials that we build with, as well as their incredibly energy-intensive climate regulation (e.g., heating and air conditioning). But in nature, biomaterials can autonomously respond to their environments by changing shape and stiffness, without consuming any metabolic energy.

Our work at the ICD Stuttgart builds upon almost a decade of scientific research on passively actuated hygromorphic mechanisms inspired by pine cone scales, and addresses new challenges in production upscaling, architectural integration, and operation under real weather conditions and across longer timescales.

Your work integrates material programming, structure, and function to create responsive, hygromorphic systems. Can you walk us through the design process—from concept to fabrication—when developing these adaptive materials?

My work is highly collaborative, and the Solar Gate Project could not have happened without our interdisciplinary team of biologists, material scientists, and architects.

The concept began with understanding the movement principle of pine cones, which is based on the hygromorphic and anisotropic properties of its cellulose microfibrils.

By custom-engineering cellulosic filament materials and using fused filament fabrication, we could then emulate the bilayered structure observed in the scales of pine cones and program our printed structures to change shape in response to variations in humidity/temperature.

Material selection is critical for long-term performance in real-world applications. How did you determine the final material choice for your system, and what methods did you use to predict its behavior over time?

We leveraged cellulose for its hygromorphic properties and availability as the most abundant biopolymer on earth, combined with polyketone as a partially biobased thermoplastic chosen for its mechanical properties and extrudability.

We studied this material system’s long-term performance in Stuttgart, which experiences similar weather conditions as the target location in Freiburg, by constructing a mock-up of the facade system in the same height and cardinal orientation as the target building in which it would be installed.

The facade mock-up was monitored under exposure to the full effects of humidity, temperature, and UV for over one year (across all seasons) and validated before installation in the livMatS Biomimetic Shell at University of Freiburg.

What are the next steps for this research? Are there specific applications—either in architecture or other fields—where you see the greatest potential for commercialization?

After completing my PhD and collaborative research projects at the ICD Stuttgart, I moved to Cornell University where I am continuing to investigate the performance potential of biobased materials in bioinspired structures.

Beyond adaptive facades that autonomously modulate shading and ventilation, I am eager to explore applications in wearables and soft robotics, as well as collaborate with industry to scale manufacturing processes and explore commercial viability.

What role did computational design and software play in this project? Were there limitations in existing tools, and what advancements would you like to see in commercial software to make these approaches more widely accessible?

Computational design was key to integrating multiple system scales — from the weather data and building on site to the meso-scale material structuring and resulting 3D-printing tool path trajectory.

The biggest challenge was in modeling and simulating material behavior (which are a complex coupling of the material composition, fabrication parameters, mesostructure, and environmental factors).

I would like to see more commercially ready tools that can accommodate biobased, anisotropic materials with time-dependent behaviors through more exchange between research and industry.

What do you hope will be the key takeaway for attendees at CDFAM, and what are you looking to gain from participating in the event?

I hope that my audience can get excited about a new type of built environment and reimagine how we can live in closer harmony with nature.

Most of all, I hope to form connections and create new collaborations with passionate advocates of sustainable manufacturing.

To learn more about how bioinspired materials, computational fabrication, and adaptive systems are shaping the future of design, join us at CDFAM Amsterdam 2025.

You’ll have the opportunity to hear from Tiffany Cheng and connect with a community of researchers, engineers, and designers working at the intersection of sustainability, simulation, and advanced manufacturing.

Whether you’re exploring new materials or rethinking how things are made, CDFAM offers a space to exchange ideas, build collaborations, and engage with the next generation of computational design.

^{Publication for SolarGate:
Cheng, T., Tahouni, Y., Sahin, E.S., Ulrich, K., Lajewski, S., Bonten, C., Wood, D., Rühe, J., Speck, T., Menges, A.: 2024, Weather-responsive adaptive shading through biobased and bioinspired hygromorphic 4D-printing. Nature Communications, vol. 15, no. 1. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-54808-8)}

^{Publication for HybridFabrication:
Cheng, T., Wood, D., Kiesewetter, L., Özdemir, E., Antorveza, K., Menges, A.: 2021, Programming material compliance and actuation: hybrid additive fabrication of biocomposite structures for large-scale self-shaping. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, vol. 16. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/ac10af)}