Joint Nordic event: Nordic Circular Construction and New Nordic Bauhaus
What should the public authorities do to push forward circularity in construction? How could we, as a society, speed up the transition to a climate-neutral society with circular living concepts?
The event gathered over 50 stakeholders, both in-house and online, from over ten countries. The event took place in the office of the Green Building Council Finland.
We started from the presentation given by Sidse Zimmermann from the Nordic Sustainable Construction programme on the legislative barriers and possibilities for reuse in construction across the Nordics and beyond. One of the outcomes was that currently, Nordic legislation aims to increase reuse through #incentivisation rather than direct legislation. If you are interested to know more, you can read the report 𝘗𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘳𝘦𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘤 here.
After that, Martha Katrine Sørensen from the Danish Technological Institute Institut gave an insightful presentation on material passports and a data dictionary for reused building materials.
Martha outlined what needs to be done to move circular construction from the pilot to the commercial stage and make it mainstream.
After the presentations, we moved to the group discussions yielding many relevant points. One of them was: still functional materials/products become waste only because we decide it – shouldn’t we prove that something is waste rather than vice versa? 𝘍𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵!
After a short coffee break, we moved on to the panel discussion on New Nordic Bauhaus and its role in preparing us for transitioning to a more sustainable society. One of the panelists, Matti Kuittinen, raised the question: if we can’t build more, is this the end of architecture? Antti Lehto from Aalto University assured us that it is not , but we must rethink our current working methods.
Speakers
Antti Lehto, Assistant Professor – Housing Design, Aalto University, Finland
Charlotte Nyholm, Architect and sustainable construction specialist, Vapaa Collective and Granlund, Finland
Gitte Grønfeld Wille, Director, Nordic Culture Point, Finland
Matti Kuittinen, Professor, Aalto University, Finland
Moderator
Nikolaj Sveistrup, Founder and Director, URBAN AGENDA, Denmark
Keynote listener
Mads Wolff, Director, Sustainability 2030, Denmark
Co-organiser
#circularconstruction #newnordicbauhaus
Nordic Innovation, Nordisk Råd og Nordisk Ministerråd, Nordic Culture Point, Grænni byggð – Green Building Council Iceland, Green Building Council Finland, Demos Helsinki, Katarzyna Jagodzinska, Nikolaj Sveistrup
