Smart sustainable buildings with innovative building services

Nieuws - 20 december 2018 - Communication BK

A new collaboration with the Dutch installation sector has resulted in the creation of the Chair of Building Services Innovations. The chair will be directed to the academic development of innovative building services and support of this part of the building industry, which has a pivotal role to play in the challenges of sustainability and quality of life.

With this collaboration, education institutions, knowledge institutions, and the installation sector will work on strengthening innovation force and the level of knowledge within the field of building services and installations. Technological innovations within this sector are rapid, which makes it all the more important to share knowledge. 

The built environment accounts for approximately 40 % of the total consumption of energy and resources. Technical building services account for 35 to 50% of investment costs. In combination with a relative low depreciation time of approximately 15 years these systems are costly as well as resource intensive. In addition, these systems account for a large part of the energy consumption and the associated CO2 emissions, as well as other harmful emissions. The building industry as a whole and the building services sector in particular has a pivotal role to play in the challenges of sustainability and quality of life that our society faces. The industry needs to shift towards smart sustainable buildings and embrace circularity, in the context of a rapidly urbanising, automated built environment. Disruptive innovation in building products, services and business models is essential for this shift to materialise.

The Chair of Building Services Innovations will be directed to the academic development of innovative building services and support of this part of the building industry. It brings together research from various faculties at TU Delft: BK Bouwkunde, the faculty of 3ME and the faculty of EEMCS. The focus will be primarily on conceptualisation and design of novel building services, especially where different disciplines meet and reinforce one another. The novelty of these may lie in the uniqueness of the concept, in the new way of combining techniques, and in the use of novel business models. Proper understanding of modern means of production and manufacturing, industrial prefabrication and installation, of (de)construction and (dis)assembly and maintenance & management are necessary. Special attention is to be paid to circularity: in the near future, also building services should be renewable, reusable and recyclable. 

Image: Formalisation of collaboration with Aart van Gelder (Stichting Wetenschappelijk Onderwijs Installatietechniek)