The Nordic countries take turn hosting the reference group meetings of Nordic Sustainable Construction. As usual, the visit to Helsinki was a nice combination of progress reporting, insightful discussions, knowledge sharing, presentation of resent results, discussions of next steps and inspiration from local site visits.
All work package leaders presented the progress of their work packages, and the following key programme accomplishments were reported:
The work package on Nordic Harmonisation of LCA
- The Roadmap ‘Harmonising Nordic Building Regulations concerning Climate Emissions’ has just been published
- The upcoming work from the tasks regarding ‘Data for LCA’, ‘BIM for LCA’ and ‘Limit values and reporting decarbonisation of Nordic building stock’ was presented by the consultants conducting the work
Read about the work package on Nordic Harmonisation of LCA and its projects here.
The work package on Circular Business Models and Procurement
- A Report on blue building materials is in progress and will be published in ultimo 2023.
- The three SMARTcity-projects Tampere, Torshavn and Stavanger are running according to plan
Read about the work package on Circular Business Models and Produrement and its projects here
The work package on Sustainable Building Materials and Architecture, SUSTAINORDIC
- The first article on ‘The Material Hierarchy’ has been published.
- The Work Package hosted a successful Nordic pavilion at the UIA Congress 2023 in Copenhagen.
Read about the work package on Sustainable Building Materials and Architecture and its articles here.
The work package on Emission-free Construction Sites
- A Report on definitions, boundaries and terminology has been published, and a pamphlet was released containing an overview of the content.
- Next step is a second report on future research needs.
Read about the work packge on Emission-free Construction Sites and their reports here.
The work package of the Programme Secretariat
- The project Competences for Reuse in Construction (CRC) is on track and going into the process of developing teaching materials
- Report on Policies Enabling Reuse in Construction has been published. The report identifies certain areas within reuse that could have a potential for further/future harmonisation.
Read about the work package of the Programme Secretariat here.
Sitevisit to the Little Finlandia – an example of Flexible Design
The reference group meeting was wrapped up by an inspiring visit to Little Finlandia that was designed to be an abstraction of a forest, with trees as structural columns. The modular structures of Little Finlandia is a great example of reversible building design and was designed to be able to be converted into a school. However, as is the risk of good architecture, the building has proven to be so functional and popular that it might end up to be a permanent landmark in Helsinki.
