The IEA Annex 57 research group on “Evaluation of Embodied Energy and Carbon Dioxide Emissions for Building Construction” was held on 22nd and 23rd April in Munich, Germany. This was the second meeting of the working phase of this group, which held a previous meeting in Cambridge in October 2012, as well as two preparatory meetings in Helsinki in 2011 and in Porto in May 2012. The group includes 29 participants from 17 countries.
On Thursday, 25 July, we attended the Brussels Launch Event for the Open House (OH) project.
As stated by the OH steering group… the OPEN HOUSE project aims to merge existing methodologies for sustainability assessment of buildings towards a common view. With the aim of being widely adopted in Europe, the OPEN HOUSE methodology is developed in a fully transparent, collective and open process, with extensive communication and interaction between all stakeholders.
The small Brussels workshop event marked the successful completion of this project, which is of considerable interest from technical, process and market viewpoints. The many actors in this field range from essentially commercial systems such as BREEAM, DGNB, HQE and LEED; to NGOs with a permanent interest in the area but no specific system; and finally to government-funded research groups set up to encourage the development of a common model of building performance assessment within a defined time frame.
At the CIB World Building Congress, held during 5-6 May in Brisbane Australia, the Triennial CIB Construction & Society Award was awarded for the first time, and the SB Conference series was the recipient. The four international promoters of the series are CIB, iiSBE, UNEP-SBCI and FIDIC.
The award citation states that … the SB Conference series embodies everything that the CIB aims to achieve in promoting research and innovation that is to the benefit of society...
The award was accepted on behalf the international partners by Chrisna du Plessis (South Africa) and Vanessa Gomes (Brazil).
The ambitious program of 2013 SB national conferences – 16 in all – is now well underway. The series is sponsored by CIB, iiSBE, UNEP-SBCI and FIDIC. So far, the events in Munich, Oulu, Vancouver, Colombo, California, Prague, Coventry and Seoul have all taken place according to schedule, and your Editor has attended two events so far, Munich and Prague. Both were very well organized and both featured a preliminary special day for Young Researchers. Emilio Mitre, coordinator of the SB13 events, has attended all except for Vancouver so far, and he will provide his impressions when he returns from holidays.
The District of Tomorrow, the real life lab environment for the Dutch region Limburg, has opened its second building. It is design developed as a learning environment by students of Zuyd university, and constructed by pupils from local construction schools together with professional partners.
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