Articles

Integrating human-centric design with BIM, IoT, Digital Twins, and additive manufacturing marks a transformative era in construction, enhancing efficiency, sustainability, and adaptability. The fusion of these technologies with human expertise redefines building design, construction, and management, despite challenges in data management and interoperability. The digital revolution reshapes the construction value chain, demanding a shift in industry roles, responsibilities, and a focus on continuous innovation and collaboration.

BlueHeart Energy (BHE) is a deep tech start-up and has developed a revolutionary thermoacoustic (TA) heat pump engine. This next generation of heat pump technology provides an alternative for vapour compression techniques and better meets the requirements of existing buildings that are not well met by today's technologies. BHE's TA engine will be supplied business to business to heat pump manufacturers in Europe and beyond.

Sustainability can often be an afterthought and applied to the finished design without consideration of the impact the design will have in assembly and during life-cycle assessment. Most stakeholders vanish after handover, and this can translate into sustainability being forgotten or ignored. As well as these concerns, methods are also needed to prevent greenwashing and bring performance into the design frame.

Digital technologies have a very large untapped potential to revolutionise the building and construction industry. Buildings are evolving into intelligent and interconnected structures, adapting to the changing needs of occupants while also optimising energy efficiency. How is Europe addressing this digital shift, and how are building professionals changing the way they work?

As the European Union strives to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, heat pumps have emerged as key players in decarbonising our buildings. These technologies exploit renewable energy sources, offering a cleaner and more sustainable alternative to traditional heating systems. The article provides an overview on EU policies, financial instruments, and EU-funded projects to facilitate the adoption of heat pumps in buildings and to overcome the current barriers.

Digitalisation of buildings is a key component of the EU clean energy transition – smart technologies can enhance energy efficiency, allow buildings to be more responsive to the needs of occupants, and improve the flexibility of energy systems. To support this trend, the EU benefits from a rich and supportive framework – covering policies, programmes and financial instruments. How is the EU specifically shaping the future of buildings and the way we interact with them? How can we make our buildings more intelligent and responsive to the environment? This article provides an overview of the state-of-play and perspectives of digital, smart buildings and technologies in the EU context.

This article explores preliminary findings on what happens to homes when they become smarter, considering how going digital affects the ways in which homes are imagined, planned, designed, and experienced on an everyday basis, provoking decision-makers to think widely about the contexts and consequences of their actions when implementing smart technologies to improve building performance.

The EXCESS project develops positive energy building solutions and demonstrates them in four European cities to prove that cost-competitive, positive-energy building solutions can be realised across different European climatic zones.

This article presents the overall framework for the definition of Plus Energy Buildings (PEB) and the latest results from projects in terms of technology solutions, multiple benefits analysis, and policy recommendations.