Keep building? How do you do it?
The green transition is driving innovation and investment in clean technologies. A committed sustainability transformation offers opportunities for growth and competitiveness.
If you have collected good and, above all, new experiences with one or more of the development topics listed here in your research, planning or construction projects, tell us about it: submit a presentation for BauZ! 2025!
1. Circular building
For starters: The material and constructive level of building construction …
a. … with used, functionally tested materials or components
b. … with regard to later reusability of the (new) material and suitability of the construction for deconstruction
c. … with regard to the suitability of the construction for future reconstruction and further construction
d. … allowing for multiple uses (longer usability, change of use: slowing down the cycle).
2. Interior, windows, building envelope, building services
Then: further focus on the building in its functions and operation
a. Room heights and air volumes
b. Creation, conservation and storage of space heat
c. Room temperature control and ventilation
d. Natural lighting and solar energy input, glare and overheating control
e. Together with others and separately: acoustics and sound insulation
f. Provision of hot water
g. Recovery of waste heat
h. Building envelope: wind, water, greenery, animals, Nature-Based Solutions, energy recovery
Enabling environment for 1. and 2.
Has your project been promoted by …
a. Digitization and AI: databases for building materials and components, new and used, logistics, design tools like BIM, prefabrication?
b. Legislative and normative regulation?
c. Exemptions from legal or normative regulation: “sandboxes”?
d. Procurement and contracting procedures that encourage cooperation rather than claims management?
3. Neighborhood cooperation
Did you participate in neighborhood cooperation with your project?
a. Energy communities: energy exchange between buildings with different use profiles, shared storage?
b. Transportation. Jointly decreasing the share of motorized individual traffic in the district, new mobility, new means of transport?
c. Public or private, shared open and green spaces: participatory planning, maintenance, use?
4. Renovation and conversion
a. Preserving old stock through conversion
b. Improving old stock through refurbishment
c. The old building stock and the conversions and additions enrich one another. (The way in which old and new parts of the building interact with one another; transdisciplinary external views of building projects, artistic perspectives, …)
d. Serial refurbishment for serial old building stock. Check conversion potential in advance.
e. Deconstruction and shrinkage
f. Unsealing and avoidance of new sealing
Enabling environment for 4.
Was your project promoted by …
a. Town center renewal, participatory processes?
b. An urban design competition?
c. Redevelopment of public space, traffic planning, land renaturalization, greening, improving the quality of stay?
d. Urban climate analyses?
e. Preservation of historical monuments and other forms of protection of existing buildings?
f. Modified building codes for redevelopment – are there already examples?
g. Making vacant properties available?
5. Participatory forms of ownership
Why? Because building for presumed needs is not the same as building for collectively articulated needs. Because the legally enforceable interests of neighbors are not the same as a shared balance of interests.
a. Building groups, yesterday – today – tomorrow
b. Housing cooperatives as renovators of their own stock
c. Housing cooperatives as renovators of newly acquired old buildings
d. Should homeowners later seek common forms of ownership? What can cooperatives as a legal form achieve?
e. Other new legal forms of investment – already tried?
f. Impact Investing based on ESG goals – can this be done in a participatory way?