PROJECT

FACTS ABOUT REGENERATIVE NEIGHBORHOODS AND CITIES

The think tank Bauhaus Earth and the Toni Piëch Foundation have entered the second phase of their collaboration on informative publications concerning the built environment transformation. A description of the first phase, and two publication series about regenerative approaches to buildings and the role of alternative building materials and sufficiency can be found here.

Why? The challenges and opportunities of the building sector in relation to climate change have received increasing attention from the scientific community in recent years. In March 2024, the national governments of 70 countries also recognized the key role of the building sector for sustainable development by signing the Declaration de Chaillot in Paris.

However, despite the increasing high-level attention, there is still a lack of easily accessible and illustrative information from credible sources that has hindered the general public, industry professionals and local and regional change-makers from participating in the discussion.

CREATING A COMMON VISION

Bauhaus Earth and the Toni Piëch Foundation are convinced that this information gap needs to be closed to give everyone a voice, increase their ownership and willingness to change, and most important: provide a vision of how the change can benefit them. And while facts matter, it’s also a language issue.

How? In November 2022, the Toni Piëch Foundation established a partnership with the think tank Bauhaus Earth to create a common knowledge base, which led to the publication of two modular series of in total six short, concise information sheets (“factsheets”) organized by topic.

Currently Bauhaus Earth is working on the third series. After series one taking the global, visionary perspective, and series two concerning building scale solutions, series three will be focusing on Regenerative Neighborhoods and Cities. It will see the publication of two factsheets in 2024, providing info about compact and mixed-use city ecosystem services. Also on the agenda: a translation of all factsheets into multiple languages, beginning with German and Chinese. With the launch of series three a total of eight factsheets will have been published in three languages.

The ongoing series three and the translations of the project are being supported by the Toni Piëch Foundation with a grant of €45,900.

All series are made available via the communication channels of Bauhaus Earth and the Toni Piëch Foundation.