Keynote Speakers

  Wim Bakens | Construction and society

Dr. Wim Bakens is the Secretary General of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB). CIB is an international association whose objectives are to stimulate and facilitate international collaboration and information exchange between organizations active in the field of building and construction research and innovation. Professor Bakens is also a Visiting Professor to the University of Westminster's School of Architecture and the Built environment, in London, UK.

Prof. Bakens' speech is about the role construction plays in the development of society (which is very different depending on the stage of development of a society), the perception of construction’s relevance to society, and the consequent appreciation by society of construction as an industry. In most European countries the capacity of the built environment is now more or less in line with what is minimally required. The construction industry’s share of the GNP has gone down, and the perceived relevance of our industry to continued growth of society has more or less permanently decreased during the past decade, along with the political support for our industry. Even the realization of the crucial role our industry could play in solving the recent international economic crisis seems to have been only temporarily. It is time for the construction industry to redefine itself and enhance again its societal relevance. It will need to focus its effort on maximizing the contribution to the main societal challenges, re-engineering its design and production processes, and develop new product and service concepts.

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  Claude Ouimet | The power of One

Claude is the Senior Vice President and General Manager for InterfaceFLOR in Canada and Latin America. Claude’s 23-year career with Interface includes roles in both manufacturing and sales. Claude’s mix of manufacturing, sales, and marketing knowledge gives him a unique perspective for integrating sustainability throughout the InterfaceFLOR corporate culture. He brings his passion for environmentally sound practices not only to manufacturing technology and practices, but also to sales strategies and marketing concepts that reflect the company’s Mission Zero. In December, 2007, Mr. Fabio Barbosa, President of Gupo Santander, the largest and most influential bank in all of Brazil, invited Claude to become a member of their Sustainability Consultative Board. In July, 2009, Claude joined the National Business Advisory Council of the David Suzuki Foundation. The David Suzuki Foundation's mission is: "To protect the diversity of nature and our quality of life, now and for the future". In February, 2010, Claude was nominated and approved to join The Natural Step Canada Board of Directors. The objective of TNS is to "help communities and businesses take meaningful steps toward sustainability".

Claude will present InterfaceFLOR's vision, Mission Zero, which is his company’s promise to eliminate any negative impact the company may have on the environment by 2020. This mission embraces cutting-edge philosophies such as Life Cycle Assessment and Biomimicry. Claude believes that all of us, individuals and companies, have the power and courage to change, to be the change, and do something to help address the global environmental crisis.
InterfaceFLOR, the world’s leading manufacturer of modular carpet, believes that there is a cure for resource waste that is profitable, creative and practical. InterfaceFLOR is on a mission to create a company that addresses the needs of society and the environment by developing a system of industrial production that decreases costs and dramatically reduces the burdens placed upon living systems.
This vision has created a thriving company culture that embraces sustainability and the concept that entrepreneurial ability is the expression of the individuals’ capacity to sense an emerging reality and to act in harmony with it. Claude will discuss how this approach to employee empowerment has become the foundation of the company’s mission to become a truly sustainable corporation and is now a driver of employee attraction, retention and has helped galvanize InterfaceFLOR associates.
In his presentation, Claude will share how InterfaceFLOR has embraced change and is taking action to become a sustainable corporation by leading a worldwide effort to design innovative and sustainable manufacturing and development processes.

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  Doreen Kalz | Energy Efficient and Solar Cooling

Dr. Ing Doreen Kalz received a Dipl.-Ing in Mechanical Enginnering at the Dresden University of Technology, Germany, and a MSc. in Environmental Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, United States. In 2010 she received her PhD at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the KIT Doctoral Award for her excellent doctoral research work on heating and cooling concepts employing environmental energy and thermo-active building systems for low energy buildings. Doreen Kalz is the Head of Team Building Analysis and Energy Concepts, at the Division Thermal Systems and Buildings of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) in Freiburg, Germany. Her research focuses on the development and investigation of low-exergy heating and cooling concepts for non-residential building employing thermo active building sustem and environmental energy. This includes the energy analysis of commercial buildings throughout Germany, the development of strategies to improve energy utilization and the continuous monitoring and evaluation of buildings over multiyear periods. 

Already today many techniques are available which allow the use of solar thermal energy for air-conditioning of buildings. For many years only plants with medium and high cooling capacities (> 35 kW) for larger buildings were available. However, recently several companies started to produce thermally driven cooling systems also for the range of low cooling capacities (> 5 kW) and offers either prototypes or even standardized market products. Thus in the mid term it will be possible to realize solar cooling and air-conditioning also for small capacity applications.
The building envelope has diverse functions and tasks. Modern glazing and thermal insulation systems not only protect the user against climatic influences, but also contribute to solar heating, thermal insulation, daylighting and ventilation with fresh air. During development, the new components must be integrated into an overall concept for the facade. Effects on the total energy demand of the building, user comfort, reliability and long-term durability determine the economic viability and market potential of an innovation. Coatings and microstructures are used to equip surfaces with special properties, e.g. infrared reflection, anti-reflective and self-cleaning effects. Switchable glazing adapts the visual contact and solar control according to the users' wishes. The speech will present cutting-edge results regarding optimization of components and facades, drawing on ISE's know-how and software tools, and testing in laboratory and outdoor test facilities to evaluate the energy efficiency and develop adapted control strategies for dynamically changeable facades. 

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  Serge Salat | Cities and Forms: On Sustainable Urbanism

Serge Salat is an architect, a graduate of the École Polytechnique and the ENA. He also earned one PhD in economics and one in art history from EHESS. He is the founding director of the Urban Morphology Laboratory. Serge Salat is the author of more than 20 books on art and architecture.
He has been a practicing architect and the project director of large infrastructure projects such as international airports and TGV train stations. Presently Director of the Urban Morphology Laboratory in Paris, he is grouping the research efforts on sustainable forms and metabolisms of cities of main French National Research Centers such as CSTB (The French Center for Building Science), Universities, engineering schools, and urban planning agencies in the field of energy, carbon and economic efficiency of urban forms. He is the author of two major books on urban morphology, as well as numerous publications and communications. For more information, please visit http://urbanmorphologylab.com/team/serge-salat

In this lecture, Serge probes the crucial issue of the shape to give to sustainable cities in the future. It unfolds a rich mosaic of two thousand years of urban history in the East and in the West through 1,200 drawings, city plans and photographs, all of which is correlated with thousands of results of original analyses for a wide range of urban textures, from Siena and Venice to New York, Brasilia, Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai. Cities and Forms also features a detailed comparative study of Haussmanian Paris and Le Corbusier's Radiant City, and an in-depth analysis of Chinese cities. This approach provides a measurable scientific dimension to such essential notions of sustainable urbanism as density, connectivity, functional mix and accessibility, by exploring the qualities of historic urban fabrics. Audience will become familiar with organic patterns, grids, transformations, and the hidden order and fractal symmetries that connect urban scales, and endow the city with a meaningful, human order, which fosters social integration and cultural diversity, appropriable by residents but at the same time structured like an ecosystem. Morphology appears as the key lever for cities to adapt to climate change. It enhances efficiency by cutting energy consumption in half. The connectivity of its networks reinforces urban resilience, on the model of such natural structures as the hierarchic, intensely connected network of nervures in leaves. Cities and Forms develops a method of urban composition founded on perceptive qualities, and the design of public spaces, squares, streets, and visual sequences. It forms the bases of a return to the city as a place of memory and history, and of a controlled relationship between the urban fabric and building typology. By the abundance of its new findings, its methods and its concrete application of complexity theories, this discussion is of utmost interest to architects, urban planners, decision-makers, and anyone eager to understand sustainable cities and contribute to their development.

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Jeremy Gibberd | Ecological Footprint and the human development index applied to assessment of built environments

Dr. Jeremy Gibberd, an architect by training (BSc, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London, UK, 1989), with a MSc (1991), Dip Arch (1992) and a PhD from the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa (2003). Jeremy works in a range of roles within the planning, design and management of infrastructure. He specialises in sustainable development and education and community buildings and his current activities and research interests involve: Investigating approaches to developing sustainable buildings in developing countries; Education and community architecture; and Sustainability and environmental control.
Gibberd has over 15 years of experience in architecture, working in a range of roles within the planning, design and management of infrastructure. He has developed specialist expertise in education and community architecture, sustainable buildings, design simulation, building performance analysis, inclusive environments, facilities management, environmental audits and planning and maintenance systems. He has a wide knowledge of relevant legislation, technological developments and best practice within these areas.
Gibberd worked with the Department for Education and Employment in the UK, carrying out research into, and publishing guidelines on, the design and management of educational buildings. These guidelines are published by HMSO and are used extensively in the UK.
At the CSIR, he has been involved in three large-scale national audits of educational facilities. He led a multi-disciplinary team of educational experts on a research project investigating the impact of policy and ICT on educational buildings. He has also managed a pilot schools building programme for the National Department of Education, which investigated innovations in school building design and management and support for community development.
Gibberd is currently working on pilot projects that investigate approaches to developing sustainable buildings in developing countries. He has worked with a number of leading practices on the design and construction of environmentally friendly buildings. He has lectured on sustainability and environmental control in South Africa and the USA and teaches at, and is an external examiner for, the University of Pretoria, University of KwaZulu-Natal and Tshwane University of Technology.
He regularly works in an advisory capacity to government, business and community organizations and has lectured and published internationally on sustainable development and education and community buildings.

In his lecture, Jeremy reviews the Human Development Index-Ecological Footprint definition to understand how it relates to the built environment. He analyses the two indices and breaks them down into their constituent parts. The implications of the EF and HDI constituents for the built environment then are ascertained through a process which translates these into minimum standards and built environment characteristics. In order to understand these characteristics better, criteria are developed to assess the existence, and nature, of these characteristics in a built environment. These criteria are applied to an urban environment in South Africa and outline results presented.
The HDI-EF definition of sustainability is particularly applicable to developing country contexts and provides useful guidance on how built environments, and proposed interventions to built environments, can be evaluated. In particular, it suggests that built environments can have a strong role in supporting communities move towards Ecological Footprint and Human Development Index targets by providing access to specific facilities. This finding leads to question whether conventional greening interventions such as solar water heater and water efficiency programmes are the most effective way of improving sustainability in communities in developing countries. Instead, it suggest that interventions aimed at improving health, education and access to healthy food such as the development of urban agriculture, local multi-purpose learning resource centres and local markets may be ‘smarter and more sustainable’ solutions, as they address pressing local needs and provide communities with opportunities to improve both their Ecological Footprint and Human Development Index performance simultaneously.

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Ilker R. Adiguzel | Beyond sustainable buildings. Towards net zero communities

Dr. Ilker Adiguzel is director of the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) in Champaign, IL and leads a $150 million research and development program annually with a staff of 350 people.  This program creates and fields environmental and infrastructure technologies to support military installations in a sustainable and affordable manner. Dr. Adiguzel was selected to the Senior Executive Service in 2006.  He held various management and research positions at CERL, after a Visiting Assistant Professor position at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).  
Dr. Adiguzel is a founding member of the Editorial Board for the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) Journal of Infrastructure Systems. He co-chairs the Construction Industry Institute (CII) Strategic Planning Committee and is a member of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction, and the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME). He also serves on the UIUC College of Engineering Innovation Leadership Advisory Board. His honors include Department of the Army Meritorious Service Medal; Federal Laboratory Consortium, Laboratory Director of the Year; Society of American Military Engineers Technology Advancement Medal; U.S. Green Building Council, Public Sector Leadership Award; University of Illinois, Distinguished Alumnus Award; and the Army Engineer Association, The Bronze Order of the deFleury Medal.

The U.S. Army has embraced the principles of sustainability and is fully committed to leading the way in sustainability.  Army installations are changing the way they think and act and are building partnerships that will benefit the military mission, the environment, and the community. The Army has already adopted U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standard and mandated minimum of LEED Silver for all new construction and achieved a number of LEED Gold and Platinum facilities. New initiatives are underway for establishing sustainability standards for the existing buildings as well.  Army 's vision is to go beyond individual sustainable buildings and to appropriately manage our natural resources with a goal of net zero energy, water and waste installations. A pilot program is underway for six installations to be Net Zero Energy, six installations to be Net Zero Water, six installations to be Zero Waste, and two installations to be Net Zero Energy, Water and Waste by 2020. The Army goal is to have 25 Net Zero Installations by 2030. These major installations are analogous to small cities, facing similar resource issues and concerns.  They exist in the midst of the same watersheds, endangered species, and ozone non-attainment areas as their municipal counterparts, and they construct millions of square footage of buildings and dispose of millions of tons of waste each year. This presentation is intended to demonstrate a set of rich examples on how a number of stakeholders from the policy makers to researchers to master planners to the private sector are working together to make the net zero installations a reality.   Many of the success stories and lessons learned would be readily applicable to the cities around the world both in developed and developing economies.

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Ron Zimmer | Intelligent buildings roadmap

Ron Zimmer is the president and CEO of the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA). Ron joined CABA in 1997 working with industry leaders who promote integrated systems and home/building automation throughout the world. In addition to working closely with the CABA Board of Directors, Ron is actively involved with a number of industry Committees/Councils including de CABA Intelligent & Integrated Buildings Council, CABA Connected Home Council, Building Intelligence Quotient Advisory Board and Life-cycle costs Analysis Advisory Board. He was instrumental in establishing CABA XML and Web Services Committee (oBIX), which now resides with OASIS. He was also on the transition team that integrated the Internet Home Alliance into CABA, which became CABA's Connected Home Research Council. Ron is a Certified Association Executive with over 25 years of Association Management experience. He has authored a number of articles and documents including "Smart Communities: a concept paper", and he regularly makes presentations on integrated buildings and home/building automation at industry events.

Ron's presentation provides the context and main findings of the CABA's Intelligent & Integrated Buildings Council (IIBC) research project titled "North American Intelligent Buildings Roadmap 2011" (IBRM 2011). An intelligent building is capable of providing its owner and occupants a flexible, adaptive comfortable and secure environment. This is accomplished through the incorporation of integrated building systems, communications, and controls. A building automation system is at the core of an intelligent building by virtue of its ability to regulate and manage the key functional units from sensors to software, into a single control system to achieve seamless flow of data and control actions. Intelligence embedded in systems are capable of enhancing operation performance and resulting significant saving in energy use, resource use, and operational and maintenance costs.
Energy savings and effective reductions achieved in resource consumption as well as greenhouse gas emissions though the use of intelligent building systems directly contribute towards making a building environmentally sustainable. This attribute has been instrumental in helping building owners understand the business case behind investing in intelligent systems and for technology vendors to achieve commercial acceptance of their products and solutions. Initiatives and mandates from the respective departments of energy and environment, both in the U.S. and Canada, are increasingly being directed at reducing energy consumption by buildings. With commercial buildings accounting for nearly two-fifths of the region's total energy, there is a serious need for this sector to reduce its energy consumption. This requires rigorous energy retrofit and digital intelligence activity to make buildings more efficient. The intelligent building product and technology vendors are consolidating capabilities to make intelligence more accessible to end-users. However, the adoption rate of such solutions is inadequate attitude and perception changes are necessary to create acceptance.
The key focus of the IBRM 2011 project is 'energy in the context of an intelligent building'. From this standpoint, the project takes a deeper dive into understanding the developments around energy efficiency in intelligent buildings, energy performance enhancements owing to incorporation of intelligence, and most importantly, a building's ability to interact with the smart grid. While this research advocates the traditional scope of IBRM projects conducted in the past, it makes a distinct departure from merely investigating adoption and acceptance rates of intelligent building solutions to the larger issue of a building's ability to use, store, and generate energy. This focus is aligned with key industry trends that are emerging in the intelligent building space, wherein the need for buildings to become 'net positive energy' assets is heavily emphasized through policy directives and think tank-led initiatives, as well as technology innovations that are working towards this 'net positive energy' goal.

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Gilberto de Martino Jannuzzi | Brazilian buildings: perspectives of energy-efficiency policies and potential for electricity onsite generation

Andy van den Dobbelsteen | Resilient cities without fossil fuel

Dr. Andy van den Dobbelsteen is a full professor of Climate Design & Sustainability at the Faculty of Architecture of TU Delft. Andy is coordinator of the Green Building Innovation research programme and responsible for the built environment theme within the Delft Energy Initiative. Andy founded the European Network for Sustainable Regions (ENSR), active in the area of sustainable energy landscapes, climate robust cities and planning for climate adaptation. Andy has been engaged with sustainable energy systems for buildings, neighbourhoods, cities and entire regions and therefore developed methods to map the energy demand and potentials (Energy Potential Mapping, Heat Mapping). These can form the basis for a spatial plan based on a sustainable energy system or energy-neutral urban reconstruction (Rotterdam Energy Approach and Planning, Amsterdam Guide to Energetic Urbanism).

The upcoming decades hampering supply of centrally delivered energy will become a serious threat, and this will have devastating effects to the functioning of cities. Because of this it is very important that cities reduce their demand for energy, optimally use their waste streams, build in systems of storage, generate sustainable energy themselves and not least interact intelligently with their metropolitan region, for the city simply cannot produce enough for itself. This will of course influence the landscape, since renewable energy = space. Essential here is the optimal tuning and exchanging of streams of energy, water, materials and food. An interesting element with energy is the exchange of heat and cold between buildings in the city.

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Chrisna du Plessis | title t.b.a. On Urban sustainability

Chrisna du Plessis is an associate professor at the University of Pretoria. Chrisna received her B.Arch (1991) and M.Arch (cum laude (1999) from the University of Pretoria and her Ph.D title from the University of Salford (2009) and D.Tech honoris causa from Chalmers University (2010). After completion of her first degree she practiced as development consultant specializing in low-cost housing development and eco-tourism and travelled extensively. Between 1996 and 1998 she was employed as part-time lecturer at the Department of Architecture at the University of Pretoria. In 1997 she joined the CSIR as urban researcher, and became a Principal Researcher in 2005. She joined the UoP's Department of Construction Economics on a part-time basis in 2010 and was appointed full-time as Associate Professor in 2011. Her field of expertise is sustainability in the built environment and she has applied this in a body of work that spanned the fields of housing, construction industry performance, urban/human settlement development and infrastructure design. She was a founding member of the Interim National Council for the Implementation of Local Agenda 21 and the Habitat Agenda, and a member of expert reference groups on the development of a National Strategy for Sustainable Development, and Energy Efficient Low Cost Housing. She has also served on the Development Bank of Southern Africa’s Expert Reference Group on Sustainable Communities and the South African Academy of Science’s Strategic Forum Committee on Science for Poverty Alleviation. She represented South Africa in the Earth Charter drafting and consultation process and has acted as expert advisor to organisations such as the United Nations Environment Programme and the Clinton Climate Positive Development Programme and is a popular speaker that has been invited to deliver numerous guest lectures at local and international universities and keynote addresses at 16 major international conferences. She was also the co-coordinator of a task group on Urban Sustainability for the International Council for Research and Innovation for Building and Construction (CIB) and ad hoc spokesperson on sustainability issues for the CIB and has served on the board and/or scientific committee of several international conferences.

Tian Feng | Sustainable and Smart Mobility for 21st Century Community

Tian Feng, FAIA, FCSI, is the District Architect of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit district (BART) in California. He is the creator and chief editor of BART Facility Standards, a web-based systemwide transit design and construction standard document that has guided BART development and improvement projects valued exceeding $10 billion since 2004, and widely referenced in transit industry.  At BART, he has broad responsibilities including formulating policy and implementation strategies for sustainability, managing architectural and engineering practices, and guiding transit supported development projects.  Feng has served as the architectural advisor to the Northern California’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Advisory Council. He participated in developing transportation policies and regional development plans and is leading transit connectivity improvement initiatives such as formulating and implementing transit and urban wayfinding standard and projects.  Supported by US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and American Public Transportation Association (APTA) and working with leading transit agencies and global consulting firms across North America, Feng initiated and led the development of Transit Sustainability Guidelines and Transit Sustainability Practice Compendium. They provide the transit industry with standards for advancing holistic development and improvement of transportation and land use that integrates mobility, livability, and environmental sustainability. Feng collaborated internationally with, such as, America-China City Alliance, and the Union of European Railway Engineers Associations promoting transit standards, interoperability, and sustainability.
Mr. Feng is currently a principal investigator for Climate Change Adaptation project for Federal Transit Administration, and has been dedicated to incorporate climate change approaches to mobility.