Sustainable Construction

Nowadays, hardly any sector of the building and construction industry can afford to ignore the matter of sustainability. Climate change and dwindling resources, but also demographic change and dense urban structures are influencing the built environment to an increasing extent and are encompassing the entire building industry. The Working Group on Sustainable Construction is concerned with implementing the concept of sustainability in the building industry: It develops instruments for assessing the sustainability of building products, building systems and industrial processes, and the buildings themselves, thereby addressing the ecological, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability under the aspect of life cycles. The concept of sustainability in the building industry is taken up and addressed at several levels. Building products in particular have a considerable influence on the sustainability performance of a building.

In cooperation with practice partners, the Working Group on Sustainable Construction is investigating the interrelationship between building products and their influence on buildings, so that even more detailed statements can be made in future about the significance of building products in the context of sustainability. Moreover, sustainable construction must be considered more and more in the context of urban development. The buildings of the future will constantly interact with their environment. Sustainable urban quarters are networked systems that no longer only consist of individually considered buildings, but which are to be seen in an entirely new context in view of their interactions.