Copenhagen,
10
October
2011
|
00:00
Europe/Copenhagen

VELUX Group generates new knowledge about sustainable living in buildings

Summary

As part of the green growth conference "Take Lead", the VELUX Group is facilitating the workshop "Sustainable Living in Buildings". 

Leading experts will explore opportunities and make recommendations on how we can ensure green growth and at the same time enhance the liveability and quality of life in buildings.

"Take Lead" is organised by the international alliance Green Growth Leaders. The ambitious goal for Green Growth Leaders is to show the way towards a green world economy and a sustainable community of tomorrow. As a strategic partner, the VELUX Group wants to show how sustainability, quality of life and financial growth go hand in hand.

"To grasp the opportunities requires a mindset where you see how the products and solutions we have today can be used to provide a better indoor climate and quality of life in buildings, while making the building environment friendly and sustainable in the long term. It is this way of thinking that the VELUX Group wants to spread and develop together with the leading experts in the world. We believe that when we share ideas, best practices and experiences we will achieve a result greater than the sum of the components. Knowledge grows when shared," says Lone Feifer, Strategic Project Director of VELUX Model Home 2020 at the VELUX Group.

Buildings are an important piece of the sustainable puzzle of potentially enormous significance since 40% of the world's energy consumption is used in buildings. Lone Feifer adds:

"In the western world we spend 90% of our time indoors – yet 30% of our buildings don't have a healthy indoor climate. So when we talk about releasing the energy potential in buildings we also need to discuss how we can improve both the liveability and the environmental sustainability of our building mass."

The workshop is one of seven that look into the potential of a specific area of green growth and sustainability. The purpose of the workshop is to share cases and experiences of sustainable building and discuss the possibilities, to map the social, economic and environmental potential and to identify actions that can unleash that potential.

The workshop has three main pillars:

  • Liveability: Mark Vacher, Assistant Professor, Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen will talk about homeliness.
  • Cost/benefit: Wolfram Trinius, Founder of Buro Trinius will lead the discussion about the Life Cycle Cost and Life Cycle Analysis of a building.
  • Innovation: Youssef Hamadi, Senior Researcher at Microsoft, will talk about The Smart Buildings Project. Apart from the key speakers, every session has a panel with experts in the field.The conclusions of the workshop will be a whitepaper that will map the potentials and be part of the next day's conference. Here Yvo de Boer, Special Global Adviser Climate Change and Sustainability KPMG, Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner of BIG, John Zysmann, Professor at Berkley, and Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for Climate Action among others will take the discussion further. The overall output from Take Lead will be The Copenhagen Manifesto. The Manifesto will be part of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro.


Time and place:
12th of October 2011 9am-4pm at Osram Huset, Valhalsgade 4, DK-2200 Copenhagen N.

About the VELUX Group
The VELUX Group creates better living environments with daylight and fresh air through the roof. The VELUX product programme contains a wide range of roof windows and skylights, along with solutions for flat roofs. The Group also supplies many types of decoration and sun screening, roller shutters, installation products, products for remote control and thermal solar panels for installation in roofs. The VELUX Group, which has manufacturing companies in 11 countries and sales companies in just under 40 countries, represents one of the strongest brands in the global building materials sector and its products are sold in most parts of the world. The VELUX Group has about 10,000 employees and is owned by VKR Holding A/S, a limited company wholly owned by foundations and family. For more details, visit www.velux.com.

For information about Green Growth Leaders, visit:

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