Values, meaning and impact in the construction and real estate industry
| A study by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning showed that up to 40% of German emissions were caused by the production, construction, modernisation and use of real estate. Of these, 75% were caused by the operation of the buildings and 25% by the upstream supply chains of the production, construction and modernisation of the buildings as well as the direct emissions of the construction industry. Many approaches for more sustainability in the sector are currently under discussion and some are already in use. Far too often they are subordinated to economic constraints. In the discussion round, the current status quo will be explained, exciting approaches to reducing emissions will be shown, but challenges will also be named. Finally, an outlook on the coming years will be ventured. All this will be exemplified by concrete projects and considered specifically for Münster. |
Organiser
Carina Beckmann from Münster, 31 years young, wants to shape a sustainable society. To this end, she is primarily driven by the issues of sustainable transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises in the economy as well as Europe-wide participatory politics across borders, so that political participation is possible for all. Locally in Münster, as Co-City Lead Volt, she brought the demands of “social housing like in Vienna” to the city council two years ago, among other things, and has since been campaigning for sustainable business as a member of the supervisory board of the Münster Economic Development Corporation. She is a European election candidate for Volt (list position 12) and previously built up the structures of the European best-practice organisation as Deputy Federal Chair of Volt Germany. Carina is convinced that there is a need for political drivers for innovative best practice such as the short neighbourhoods like in Barcelona or Copenhagen. At the same time, she works as an innovation & quality manager at Volksbank Münsterland Nord eG to bring the cooperative model and regional cycles into the future.
Thomas Möller has been working in municipal climate protection for around 10 years. As project manager in the district of Steinfurt from 2012 to 2016, he was primarily responsible for involving the regional economy in energy transition processes.
Thomas Möller has been working for the City of Münster since 2016. He started as a project manager in the Climate Unit (then called the Coordination Unit for Climate and Energy), focusing on communication, public relations and network management. From 2019 to 2022, he supported the head of the real estate and sustainability department, Matthias Peck, as an advisor, before taking over the management of the City of Münster’s Climate Unit in 2022. Here, he and his growing team accompany the entire municipal climate protection and climate adaptation processes and activities in Münster.
Karolin Wisser is an architect and a Master of Engineering for Future-Proof Building.
In her Master’s thesis – which also resulted in a book – she investigated the acceptance of smart home technologies and thus the connection between the megatrends of digitalisation and sustainability in the private living environment.
For the past 5 years, she has been working mainly in planning and tendering for a large German architectural firm. She is currently working on a sustainable renovation project in which, among other things, existing building components are saved during partial deconstruction and returned to the cycle. She is also involved in the company’s sustainability team: all aspects from everyday office life to project work are to be made more sustainable and transformed.
Her passion for sustainable change extends to all areas of her private life as well.
Andreas Krys studied architecture in Münster and at the art academy in Düsseldorf. In 1999 he co-founded the architecture firm bk|a bleckmann & krys. After becoming self-employed, he worked as managing director and partner in the agn Generalplaner Group. Since 2022 he has been an associate partner at MAAS & PARTNER Architekten in Münster. His practical activities are supplemented by various jury and moderator activities. In addition, he is chairman of the supervisory board of a housing cooperative of WOGEDO/Düsseldorf. Since 2016, Andreas Krys has been Professor of Architecture and Project Development at the EBZ Business School in Bochum. Between 2022, he added the task as EBZ University Ambassador at the ICG Institute for Corporate Governance. The ICG is concerned with sustainable ecological and economic implementation programmes in the real estate industry. The ICG aims to develop sustainable corporate governance with a focus on social and societal responsibility, which should increase the industry’s willingness to consistently engage in these areas.
Together with his team, Jens Thormeyer deals with a wide range of tasks: from competition design to implementation planning, from small-scale residential construction to urban development concepts. However, the focus of his work over the past 20 years has been on the planning of retail properties, as new buildings, in revitalisation and increasingly in conversion.
Two things characterise Jens Thormeyer’s work: the human scale and the unconditional pursuit of quality. The majority of his projects start on an urban scale. It is always a question of the interaction between public open space and the structural layout. Jens Thormeyer sees it as his duty to work with his clients to find sustainable solutions for implementation.
