WACKER Group, a globally active chemical company headquartered in Munich, is supporting a project by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) to build up an innovation platform for sustainable construction.

The two partners have unveiled an agreement to this effect. The project being funded, known as “ChangeLab! WACKER / KIT Innovation Platform for Pioneering Sustainable Construction”, is aimed both at the institute’s students and at architects, engineers and construction experts seeking to learn about and discuss new ideas and conceptual approaches in the field of materials development and in construction methods for a circular economy.

The ChangeLab! innovation platform has been launched by WACKER Group and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Public lectures, symposia and ideas competitions are planned. And WACKER is also providing funding for a digital overhaul of the department’s materials library. The project is scheduled to last three years.

The goal of the innovation platform is to forge stronger ties between researchers and actors at the various stages of the construction-sector supply chain. Events such as the “grow.build.repeat.” symposium, likely to be held in KIT’s Department of Architecture on December 3-4, 2020, will encourage discussions on the biological material cycle within the construction industry and foster networking among that industry and among architecture and construction research. The focus will be on the innovative potential offered by renewable construction materials and their construction principles in this sector.

“We are deliberately laying down a marker for the development of sustainable technologies in the construction sector. This is a matter of strategic importance to us,” said Peter Summo, president of the WACKER POLYMERS business division.

WACKER has long espoused sustainable product solutions. WACKER POLYMERS, a world-leading producer of binders based on vinyl acetate-ethylene copolymers, uses biobased acetic acid sourced from the timber industry to manufacture binders for interior wall paints.

The other project partner involved in the innovation platform is the Professorship of Sustainable Construction at the Institute for Building Design and Technology within the KIT’s Department of Architecture. An expert group there, led by Prof. Dirk E. Hebel, has been conducting research and practical work on sustainable materials resources and closed-loop construction principles since 2017.

“Climate change and the question of how we want to deal with increasingly scarce resources in the future must become central issues in the everyday thinking, acting and building of our discipline”, said Hebel. In his view, it is therefore important to develop new materials and construction principles that will add to the range of possibilities available to architects and construction engineers and to keep pressing ahead with the closed-loop approach.

WACKER Group, a globally active chemical company headquartered in Munich, is supporting a project by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) to build up an innovation platform for sustainable construction.

The two partners have unveiled an agreement to this effect. The project being funded, known as “ChangeLab! WACKER / KIT Innovation Platform for Pioneering Sustainable Construction”, is aimed both at the institute’s students and at architects, engineers and construction experts seeking to learn about and discuss new ideas and conceptual approaches in the field of materials development and in construction methods for a circular economy.

The ChangeLab! innovation platform has been launched by WACKER Group and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Public lectures, symposia and ideas competitions are planned. And WACKER is also providing funding for a digital overhaul of the department’s materials library. The project is scheduled to last three years.

The goal of the innovation platform is to forge stronger ties between researchers and actors at the various stages of the construction-sector supply chain. Events such as the “grow.build.repeat.” symposium, likely to be held in KIT’s Department of Architecture on December 3-4, 2020, will encourage discussions on the biological material cycle within the construction industry and foster networking among that industry and among architecture and construction research. The focus will be on the innovative potential offered by renewable construction materials and their construction principles in this sector.

“We are deliberately laying down a marker for the development of sustainable technologies in the construction sector. This is a matter of strategic importance to us,” said Peter Summo, president of the WACKER POLYMERS business division.

WACKER has long espoused sustainable product solutions. WACKER POLYMERS, a world-leading producer of binders based on vinyl acetate-ethylene copolymers, uses biobased acetic acid sourced from the timber industry to manufacture binders for interior wall paints.

The other project partner involved in the innovation platform is the Professorship of Sustainable Construction at the Institute for Building Design and Technology within the KIT’s Department of Architecture. An expert group there, led by Prof. Dirk E. Hebel, has been conducting research and practical work on sustainable materials resources and closed-loop construction principles since 2017.

“Climate change and the question of how we want to deal with increasingly scarce resources in the future must become central issues in the everyday thinking, acting and building of our discipline”, said Hebel. In his view, it is therefore important to develop new materials and construction principles that will add to the range of possibilities available to architects and construction engineers and to keep pressing ahead with the closed-loop approach.