Green Building Innovation

Programme leaders
Prof.dr.ing. U. Knaack, Prof.dr.ir. A.A.J.F. van den Dobbelsteen

Department
Building Technology

Participating Chairs:

Example Projects:

Summary

Sustainability of the built environment is an urgent necessity and it is the present generation of scientists, designers and builders who need to makes the radical changes before irreversible effects take place to the climate and energy provision. Society needs to shift toward an economy based on renewable or recyclable resources and a built environment that can largely sustain itself. The greatest challenge lies in the alteration of existing areas: with 90% of the near future building stock already built, effective improvement can only be achieved by immediate action to improve entire regions, cities, districts, neighbourhoods, buildings and building elements. A separation of scale and competence is not the issue any more: for a paradigm shift we need to think across boundaries and disciplines.

This requires research that on the one hand has a scientific basis but on the other hand can translate this knowledge to new technology and design interventions. Green Building Innovation needs to become the leading research group in the area of sustainable technological innovation for the built environment. The programme is founded on the competence of the scientific areas of Climate Design (chairs of Building Physics, Building Services, and Climate Design & Sustainability) and Building Technological Design (chairs of Design of Construction, Product Development and Architectural Engineering), two sections of the Faculty of Architecture that have performed well over the last 5 years.

Green Building Innovation covers the indoor environment, the outdoor environment and the dividing skin in-between, as well as the essential flows that enable living, working and travelling: energy, water and materials. Strongly founded on the existing knowledge and experience, Green Building Innovation focuses on themes that are currently significant in terms of societal and scientific value. These are: climate and energy planning and design (in relationship to climate adaptation and carbon neutral redevelopment of cities and buildings), e-novation (energy renovation of existing buildings), autonomous housing concepts (self-supporting building designs), closed and connected cycles (control of the essential flows), comfort and health (in buildings and the built environment) and green product development (building skin, elements and services).