Mission for the future of building affordable.sustainable.safe.

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At the BAU 2025 trade fair, the Fraunhofer Building Innovation Alliance will be showcasing products and system solutions for an affordable, sustainable and safe construction industry. | Copyright: Fraunhofer Building Innovation Alliance | Download

The Fraunhofer Building Innovation Alliance sees its primary task as providing
impetus for the urgently needed transformation in the construction sector. Its goal is
to develop effective, future-oriented solutions for and with industry. It aims to identify
prospects and formulate demands and tasks. To this end, the member institutes of
the Alliance are conducting intensive research into new products and solutions. The
focus is on criteria such as affordability, sustainability and resilience. “To some
extent, climate change, social peace and the resilience of Germany's resources are
decided in the construction industry,” says Thomas Kirmayr, Managing Director of
the Fraunhofer Building Innovation Alliance, adding: “That's why we need to speed
up this transformation and make it more effective and efficient. Research plays a
crucial role here.”
The exhibits from the Fraunhofer Institutes participating in BAU 2025 are grouped
into three thematic islands “Sustainability”, “Productivity” and “Resilience”.
They showcase new, innovative and effective materials, products and research
results that can make the construction industry a “better” industry.

A pioneering role in sustainability

Sustainability is a key issue when it comes to the manufacture and use of building
materials and to the operation of buildings. The production of concrete alone
accounts for around 2.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions annually. One way of
significantly reducing emissions is Carbon Capture and Utilization, or CCU for short.
This involves the capture, transportation and subsequent use of carbon compounds.
“With CO2-negative processes and building materials, with a carbon capture
usability strategy promoted by politicians and with innovative ideas and research projects that go all the way to practical application in the construction industry, we
could turn 2.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions into 4.6 billion tons of CO2 savings.
Germany could secure a pioneering role in this field,” says Kirmayr. At the BAU
2025 trade fair, exhibits will include new climate-friendly building materials that have
these CO2 binding properties or new building materials which, through recycling and
a well-thought-out circular economy, can be reused on construction sites.

According to the German Federal Environment Agency, Germany's building-related
final energy consumption has fallen in recent years, but still accounts for 35.5
percent of the country's total final energy consumption. This is one reason to
continue to push ahead with this development. The consistent expansion of
renewable energies ensures energy generation and storage in buildings and
contributes decisively to a sustainable heating transition. The concepts and products
developed by various Fraunhofer institutes show how buildings can be operated in
an energy-neutral way or even used to generate energy beyond their own needs.
These include solutions in the field of photovoltaics and the use of renewable
energies – for example, heat pumps instead of gas-fired heating systems, insulating
materials made from renewable raw materials or with a smaller carbon footprint, and
creative surface technologies for façades, windows and doors.

Boosting productivity through sufficiency

Building must become affordable again. This demand is growing louder and louder
both in business and in politics. “What we need is knowledge transfer from other
industries, such as the automotive or shipbuilding sectors, but also new system
solutions that address the fragmented and small-scale structure of the construction
industry,” explains Thomas Kirmayr. Another approach that could significantly cut
building costs is an increase in digitalization and the use of artificial intelligence. A
lead project of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft titled “BAU-DNS” is working on the
development of key concepts for boosting productivity that aim to cut costs, increase
circularity and achieve CO2 neutrality for materials and systems. Visitors to BAU
2025 can see some of these solutions at the Innovation Cube, such as façade
modules with integrated photovoltaics or digital methods for recording buildings
quickly and accurately. In addition to boosting productivity, however, the focus must
also be on sufficiency, which means making do with only what is necessary. This
applies not only to the use of materials or resources, but also to bureaucracy and
regulations, i.e. reducing them to a minimum.

Resilience for safe housing and living

Climate change and the growing scarcity of resources are challenges that are
increasingly burdening our society. “Germany won’t be able to afford many more
disasters like the flooding in the Ahr Valley,” says Thomas Kirmayr and calls for a
resilience offensive: prompt answers are needed to the questions of how cities and
buildings can be effectively protected against flooding, heat and extreme weather,
how water management or a circular economy can be optimized, but also how the
economy can be strengthened and how supply bottlenecks and constantly rising
costs can be reduced. The Fraunhofer Building Innovation Alliance has specific
measures in mind for this. For example, the consistent development and expansion
of networks made up of universities, research institutions and industrial companies
could help, as well as the establishment of a “Circular Economy and Urban Mining”
research cluster as part of a federal construction research program, and
interdisciplinary research consortia. At the BAU 2025 trade fair, concrete examples
from research collaborations will be presented to interested parties. These include
urban planning methods adapted to climate change, options for biodiverse façade
greening, and the detection and removal of hazardous substances such as lindane
or pentachlorophenol (PCP) that have been used in buildings.

Lecture program

In addition to the exciting and innovative exhibits, we invite visitors to attend
informative lectures at our booth. Find out about the latest research findings and talk
to our experts. The lecture program will be available for viewing on our website
www.bau.fraunhofer.de in the coming weeks. Here you will also find further valuable
and interesting information about the Fraunhofer Building Innovation Alliance's
exhibition at the trade fair.

Information about the Fraunhofer Building Innovation Alliance can be found at
www.bau.fraunhofer.de.

Wissenschaftlicher Ansprechpartner:
thomas.kirmayr@ibp.fraunhofer.de

Weitere Informationen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XhsnpsW9UY Video