Climate-Friendly Construction

The experts at the Research Center Building and Design focus on sustainable building in Austria. The building materials concrete and wood are the focus of their research work.

Recycling Concrete

The correct use of building materials plays an important role when it comes to the sustainability of buildings. Concrete is the most used building material in the world. Buildings, roads, bridges and other infrastructure objects have been built with concrete since Roman times. However, a lot of CO₂ is released during the production of concrete.

Markus Vill, Head of the Research Center, and Marc-Patrick Pfleger therefore asked themselves if there was a more climate-friendly way to produce concrete. In the “Life Cycle Engineering in Structural Concrete Construction” project, they found that CO₂ emissions can be reduced through recycling and that concrete contributes to the circular economy as a sustainable building material. The two also developed a method to permanently bind even more carbon in demolition concrete and, using life cycle-oriented forecast models, calculated how existing concrete structures can be preserved for as long as possible.

Promoting Wood

Wood is a climate-friendly building material. It binds CO₂, grows back and can be completely recycled. Martin Aichholzer, Head of Degree Program Architecture – Green Building, conducts research in the field of sustainable architecture at the Research Center and wants to promote multi-story wood construction in Austria. After all, not only single-family houses, but also high-rise buildings can be constructed with wood. However, this requires new collaborative approaches to planning and execution. In the “Holzbau 4.0” project, Martin Aichholzer and Aída Santana Sosa discussed and developed possible strategies together with representatives from the industry.

The Research Center also conducts research on the exchange of knowledge about sustainable building.