What to expect from the Affordable Housing Initiative Tech Camp in Barcelona this June?
16-05-2023During the 4th edition of the International Social Housing Festival, Affordable Housing Initiative Tech Camp on 8-9 June in Palau de Congressos in Barcelona will be the place where social and affordable housing providers from all across Europe will meet diverse tech innovators. In two days, they will have a better understanding of discuss what technology could best transform their neighbourhoods so that they can turn into true lighthouse districts that strike the sustainability-affordability balance.
Riding the Renovation Wave with a very ambitious timeline in mind makes the choice of the right technologies and approaches in the planning phase, in the selection of building materials and systems, and throughout its lifecycle while taking care of the local context is a major challenge
Ready-to-market sustainable products and services, novel technical methodologies and smarter approaches will be presented with the objective of making them work in the affordable housing context. Participants will also be invited to discuss the pressing questions that the sector is facing in this regard, such as How to define technology pathways towards sustainability, affordability, and liveability? What barriers and gaps get in the way of mainstreaming useful technologies? How can we make innovative technologies affordable? And how to make them work for the residents?
REGISTER BY MAY 29 – https://socialhousingfestival.eu/register/
8th June 2023 – PLENARY SESSIONS
OFFICIAL OPENING
Bent Madsen, Housing Europe President of the Board, and Paul Cartuyvels, ECTP President, will officially open the Affordable Housing Initiative Tech Camp.
DEMONSTRATING THE RENOVATION WAVE IN THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING SECTOR
Moderated by Anna Gumbau, the Tech Camp will start with the session “Demonstrating the renovation wave in the affordable housing sector”, which aims at answering questions such as how should districts be renovated? What principles should the public, social and cooperative housing providers follow that would bring about the socially just energy transition? In this session, Anna Athanasopoulou, from the European Commission, will present the Affordable Housing Initiative, while Sorcha Edwards, from the European Affordable Housing Consortium, will introduce an energy transition that works for all. Then, the three lighthouse projects DROP, PROLIGHT and SUPERSHINE, will give an overview on the integrated renovation methodologies to transform social housing districts into inclusive smart neighbourhoods.
3 BARRIERS HOLDING YOU OFF FROM DISTRICT RENOVATIONS AND HOW TO OVERCOME THEM
Anna Gumbau will moderate the next session about “3 barriers holding you off from district renovations and how to overcome them”. The European Affordable Housing Consortium has identified some of the most pressing barriers from the local stakeholder perspective. The results show an urgent need to innovate the renovation process itself, work more efficiently and aim to achieve higher degree of sustainability. Therefore, there will be three different presentations and the barriers and needs of the renovation process: Ulla-Brit Kramer (Overijssel Province) will present the need for an industrial approach to provide full renovation packages and scale up the process; Enrico Grillo (Sequas) a need for mainstreaming circularity principles; and finally, Sven van Elst (ASTER) will introduce the impact and difficulties of tenant relocation.
RENOVATING AT THE DISTRICT SCALE: WHY, WHAT AND HOW?
For the past year, as part of a collaborative effort, the European Affordable Housing Consortium has been gathering examples across Europe, which together can potentially form a narrative or ‘blueprint’ to guide local organisations towards delivering the just energy transition. In this session, Stefania Mascolo (GNE Finance) and Nerea Gómez (ECTP) will present some of that work. After that, Andoni Hidalgo (Euroiker) will introduce the Opengela One-stop-shop, a project to spread urban regeneration in the Basque Country. The session will count with a presentation from Francisco Javier Martín Ramiro (Ministry of Transport and Urban Agenda of Spain) about the district scale and the EU regulatory framework from the perspective of the Spanish Presidency. To conclude, a panel discussion will debate about replicating approaches from early adopters.
USING DATA TO IMPROVE THE ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN OUR BUILDINGS
The last session of the first day of the Tech Camp will focus on “Using data to improve the energy efficiency in our buildings”. Leandro Madrazo (Ramon Llull University), Elissaios Sarmas (National Technical University of Athens) and Guillermo Andrés Nieto (Veolia) will showcase their applications of data analysis to optimise the renovation and construction process. At the end, they will be invited to discuss how to improve the way small and medium sized housing providers access data science expertise and learn from their accumulated data to help improve energy efficiency or optimise decision making.
9th June 2023 – DAY 2: TECH TALKS
TECH TALK 1: ON CIRCULARITY
The second day of the Tech Camp will be structured in Tech Talks about specific subjects which will be moderated by Beatriz Pineda Revilla and Carlos Delclós Gomez, from RMIT Europe. The first Tech Talk will tackle the application of circular principles to construction and renovation. Alexis Versele, from KU Leuven, will present a prototype of a steel and wood prefabricated house built through the design for disassembly and adaptation principles. Gaetano Bertino, from Alchemia Nova, will introduce their leitmotif includes research, development and education as well as productization, selling and consulting of circular economy and nature-based solutions. And finally, Lorena Rodríguez Lara, from the project Bio EcoMatter, will show how the construction could be transformed by avoiding cement and sand through their new bio-mortar.
TECH TALK 2: ON NEW ENERGY EFFICIENCY SYSTEMS IN CONSTRUCTION OR RENOVATION
The day will continue with a session focused on new energy efficiency systems. Barry Lynham, from Knauf energy Solutions, will present some of their innovative products, concepts and systems that combine the key aspects for enhancing the Urban Environment by making it healthier for the residents. Xavier Dubuisson, from RetroKit, will talk about a software platform that provides a data management system and analytical tools to assist housing professionals in making evidence-based decisions for investment in energy upgrades. To conclude, Otto Höller, from Nettelbeckplatz, will introduce the main results of the EU-funded project DREEAM, through which they renewed a housing complex from 1970 opting for a balanced approach, with traditional and novel technological solutions, including battery storage of the energy provided by photovoltaic installations.
TECH TALK 3: ON INDUSTRIALISED APPROACHES
The day will continue with a discussion on three different industrialised approaches in the renovation of districts. Juan Carlos Iquero, from AM Platform, will introduce the Additive Manufacturing Technology Platform, and the main advantages of additive manufacturing and modular construction. Oksana Talisainen will represent the Mustamäe District, a good practice of district renovation in Tallin, Estonia, which combined modular processes and prefabricated panels. Then, Paul Dufraisse, from EnergieSprong, will introduce the Giga Regio Factory project, whose main aim is to develop an open source housing qualification tool and a smarter aggregation strategy to launch large-scale collective zero-energy industrial renovations. The session will finish with a presentation from William Nelissen, from Sociale Energy Sprong, who will talk about a pilot project in Hoeselt, based on the usage of industrially prefabricated external cladding and energy modules.
TECH TALK 4: ON DIGITISATION
After lunch, the Tech Camp will continue with the last session: Tech Talk on digitisation. This session will provide an overview on different examples of digitization applied on renovation and construction in an affordable, adaptable and purpose driven manner. First, Alex van der Leer, from SPOTR, will talk about digital off-site inspection of buildings. Ian Pyburn, from IES R&D Ltd, will present how to use Digital Twin Technology to optimise renovation for Social Housing. And finally, the last presentation will come from Elena Conte, who will introduce the NEMESIS project and a digital tool for the estimation of a building’s Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) using information from BIM tools, combined with Building Management Systems (BMS).
Throughout the Festival
- Exhibition Area and Real-time Technology Demonstrations
- SMEs will showcase their market ready or close-to-market technologies.
Renovation Helpdesk
A dedicated space will be occupied with one-on-one support for local practitioners with experts from across Europe. This support will be organised under a booking-only approach, via the online Renovation Helpdesk booking system available on the Accelerator website.
Limited places. Registration is mandatory
Find the whole programme of the Affordable Housing Initiative Tech Camp here.
REGISTER BY MAY 29 – https://socialhousingfestival.eu/register/