Projects
From waste to building. GEO supporting tool for a Circular Built Environment. Visualizing Construction and Demolition Materials Stocks and Flows. (GEO-CBE). University of Antwerp
Digital environment for management of permits and compliance in building and construction Ghent University
Managing the process of permits needs to be streamlined. The EU-funded DigiChecks project will build a solution to provide flexibility, ease-of-use and efficiency to the permit validation and approval system in construction project environments. The project will implement the following steps: the first is the creation of a standardised permit ontology comprising a shared language for permits. Next is a digitising permit process tool based on ...
Reviving the circular building industry. Looking into construction, demolition and reuse from the past to the future. Vrije Universiteit Brussel
demolition works still remains a niche activity today. However, the
salvage and reuse of materials was common practice until far into the
twentieth century. Therefore, this research aims to comprehend the
preconditions of a flourishing circular building industry, in order to
reveal opportunities and possibilities for the salvage of materials
...
Retrofitting (eco-)system. Development of a circular construction method for office building facades retrofitting by means of using bio-based materials and reusing of former facade’s components. KU Leuven
The research has the aim to look at the topic of net-zero carbon facades from a larger point of view, by conceiving it as part of a wider ecosystem, made of different scales and perspective. It seeks an interdisciplinary approach that combines technology, architecture, urban policies and spatial practices in order to finally develop a repeatable and systemic construction process for the circular retrofit of office buildings’ facades in ...
Hidden Innovation. Building church roofs in Belgium (1830s-1930s): construction technologies, architectural-historical contextualization, and present heritage challenges in international perspective. KU Leuven
The adaptive reuse of churches has become an important heritage challenge in Western Europe. Theories, design projects, and realizations proliferate, but are often based on incomplete heritage value assessments. Especially 19th and early 20th-century churches are considered less valuable because too numerous and too recent. In Belgium, many churches from the 1830s-1930s contributed to construction innovation and resulted from passionate ...
Sustainable innovation in terms of technology and comfort of living for wood construction applications Ghent University
The main objective of the VIS range is to the wide range of timber construction systems more rapidly to achieve nearly zero energy buildings of the future. This Project will support the entire timber sector and its suppliers to accelerate the existing trend of wooden buildings and strengthen. The latter will realize the project by providing specific, scored and validated solutions and an innovation platform for component and system ...
Metropolises in the Mud Innovation in Delta Building Technology in Europe and China in the pre-Industrial Age KU Leuven
Deltas are among the most urbanised and wealthiest regions of the world. Today, their very existence is threatened by climate change. Innovative solutions are urgently needed, and delta cities around the globe have joined forces to confront the climate crisis. The dependence on innovation for their survival is however not a recent phenomenon but has a longer history. Surprisingly, little is known about the specialised skills and knowledge ...
Technology and building blocks for wide bandgap based power converters KU Leuven
Continous evolution in the powerelectronics domain enables smaller, more efficient and reliable powermanagement systems. To continue this evolution alternatives for the current silicon (Si) based power transistors have to be found. Promising alternatives are found in the wide bandgap (WBG) materials, with galliumnitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) as most well known, mature, variants. Their use leads to smaller and more efficient, and ...
Construction History, Above and Beyond. What History Can Do for Construction History Ghent University
Since 1985, Construction History is internationally recognized as a distinct field within history, situated on the interface between the history of engineering and the history of architecture. Antoine Picon, historian of architecture and technology, argued in 2006 that construction history “offers a unique opportunity to rethink the relations between technology and culture." This proposal starts from the observation that this opportunity has ...