Circularity in focus: Next steps for NEB as Festival closes

Europe has an urgent need to reform construction methods to address not only global climate change, but also to curb pollution and protect the natural environment. 

Such challenges are an opportunity to rethink how we design, build and live, said Jessika Roswall, European Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy. 

"When we create homes that are energy and water efficient, climate-adapted, and community-centred, we do more than cut carbon emissions. We reduce long-term costs for families, we cut waste, we ease the burden on public services. We improve wellbeing," she said. "In short, sustainability and affordability go hand in hand." 

Projects being showcased at the Festival show how the NEB is being translated into innovative solutions, she said, and what the possibilities are. 

Some of the projects on display included LIFE BIOMANTE, which developed ways to insulate buildings in Amsterdam using natural materials, the Liepāja Restoration Centre, which teaches traditional restoration methods for historic buildings, and Circular Lab Ukraine and Rebuild Green 2030. These two initiatives, driving circular and regenerative reconstruction in Ukraine through resource-efficient, collaborative approaches, together won the Best Innovation award under the New European Bauhaus (NEB) framework at the Festival. 

As the NEB movement gathers momentum, the next challenge is to widen participation and build capacity for initiatives by sharing skills learned through projects such as these. 

This is the vision of the NEB Academy, an innovative decentralised initiative which engages with building companies, engineers, architects and urban planners to help scale up the knowledge on inclusive and sustainable regeneration developed through NEB projects. 

Additional €50 million  

The NEB Academy started with a focus on building capacities and skills, and is now entering a second phase, which will connect knowledge and results stemming from NEB initiatives to focus on business development and innovation. During the Festival, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also announced an additional €50 million in funding to support the NEB Academy. 

People who are “implementing the NEB projects are contributing ... to building up the infrastructure,” explained Andreja Kutnar, coordinator of the NEB Academy Alliance, an EU-funded project tasked with launching the NEB Academy. 

Since it started in 2024, the Alliance has created a network of hubs spread across Europe to develop joint business plans and build a digital training platform on topics such as bio-based construction techniques and circular urban regeneration. 

By doing this, the NEB Academy has already helped to transform Europe’s urban spaces. The NEB Academy contributes to creating a Europe-wide circular economy where bio-based materials are increasingly used as building materials, a critical element needed to increase competitiveness on the continent. 

“The NEB Academy, or the NEB itself, should become somehow the matchmaking platform between demand and supply,” Manuel Götzendörfer, Managing Director, Built Environment at UnternehmerTUM, a start-up hub in Munich, Germany, said during the panel discussion. 

NEB Academy worldwide

Through the NEB Academy, circular construction methods are also being spread beyond the EU. For example, stakeholders in Japan and Brazil are exploring ways to open the NEB Academy hubs in their countries. 

Yoshiyuki Kawazoe, an architect and associate professor at the University of Tokyo, said during a panel discussion on the NEB Academy worldwide that he was preparing to set up a hub in Japan. Last month, a NEB Academy hub was launched in Ukraine to provide local architects, communities and authorities with expertise and help to support sustainable and inclusive reconstruction in the war-torn country. 

It’s very much a bottom-up approach, starting with the municipal level,” explained Andrej Horvat, deputy programme director of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme, an EU-funded project to drive sustainable recovery in Ukraine. "New European Bauhaus as an initiative was very prominent and very welcome in Ukraine from the very beginning.” 

Overall, the experience of these international groups "could be very relevant also to the NEB programme,” said discussion moderator Réka Matheidesz, from the Commission’s NEB Facility Expert Group. “They could also learn from the NEB and bring it back to their societies, their cultural contexts.”