The Sustainable Places 2024, the European conference dedicated to promoting sustainable building practices and climate-resilient urban planning, bringing together experts from the EU Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe research funded projects and initiatives. Partners from the REHOUSE project presented insights to the current status and lessons learnt.
The conference, held from September 23 to 25, emphasised the need to address sustainability at the building, district, and urban scale by sharing research outcomes in workshops, and facilitating networking between stakeholders working towards achieving EU sustainability targets and climate change goals.
The focus of this year’s Sustainable Places conference was on accelerating the pace of building renovations, renewable energy adoption, and decarbonisation efforts. Conference themes included energy communities, smart cities, climate change mitigation, and the integration of digital technologies like AI and digital twins to enhance sustainability.
The hybrid format of the event, allowed for a wide range of project-organised workshops. The REHOUSE project participating under the Built4People Partnership, was represented in the following two sessions:
- On September 24, the project was featured in a session hosted by NEBULA, titled “Unlocking the Renovation Wave.” Javier Antolín Gutiérrez (CARTIF) presented REHOUSE’s innovative approaches to building retrofits, focusing on the project’s holistic renovation packages designed to improve building efficiency using bio-sourced and recycled materials, modular construction techniques, and integrated renewable energy sources. Further projects were representing their solutions and approaches in this session: FORTESIE, MULTICARE, SMARTeeSTORY, inperso, EBENTO, CHRONICLE. This session was initiated as a joint outcome of the Network of building renovation projects.
- On September 25, REHOUSE further demonstrated its impact during a session hosted by LIST & R2M, “Regeneration: Crafting Sustainable and Inclusive Neighbourhoods.” Project members Paraskevi (Voula) Dimitriadou (DUTh), Matteo Porta (RINA C) shared insights into the Greek and Italian demonstration sites, showcasing how REHOUSE’s sustainable renovation techniques are being implemented in real-world settings and also reflecting the challenges and first lessons learnt. Further projects were representing their insights: REGEN, CALECHE, drOp, EVELIXIA, Inherit, SNUG, SMARTeeSTORY, NBenefit$, WeGenerate.
The REHOUSE project answered questions from conference participants at a booth as part of the Built4People Partnership.
The involvement at the Sustainable Places supported the exchange amongst experts and increased furthermore the visibility to the activities within the REHOUSE project.