Counterintuitive Building Types
Innovation Potentials for Sustainable Transformation of Commercial and Retail Locations
FFG Project ID: 893554
Nov. 2022 – Nov. 2025
Synopsis
Selected commercial retail and properties provide existing resources for this project’s case studies that will convert and further develop them towards more positive energy, use, and life cycle balances. The currently underperforming properties will be transformed into more active and attractive places of higher experiential density and environmental relevance through multiplication of space and uses in the interior and exterior areas, demonstrating opportunities for more sustainable development of these understudied building typologies.
Summary
Buildings and construction processes cause about 40% of all CO2 emissions and can therefore make a significant contribution to tackling the biggest problems of our time - climate collapse and loss of biodiversity. This requires multiple paradigm shifts, which this project addresses in a little-researched segment of the planning and real estate sector: the countless retail, retail park and commercial properties that have been built on greenfield sites and connected to individual transport in recent decades.
Can remodeling and rebuilding these substantial building inventories integrate more circular economy approaches? This approach seems counterintuitive at first, since for most of these properties only demolition, recycling, and renaturation seem reasonable, yet this project would like to use selected properties to develop scenarios that build on these existing resources and their infrastructure connections and think them toward more sustainably positive energy, use, life cycle, and social balances. Through the multiplication of space and uses - communal, logistical, sports and leisure-related programs, temporary/experimental residential and office uses, etc. - these properties could not only be structurally redesigned and further developed and equipped with state-of-the-art technologies, but also create socially sustainable, identity- and community-creating "third" places with the corresponding quality of stay and long-term profitability for society as a whole.
In this cooperative R&D project, possible building and energy solutions for the climate-neutral city will be developed based on these monofunctional and underperforming building stock of the last decades. Based on architecturally and urbanistically sophisticated conversion and further development scenarios, existing buildings, conversions and extensions will be designed, modeled and computationally verified as an integrated and combined system for climate-neutral buildings and neighborhoods.
The project connects key sustainability goals by building on extensive existing resources, designs the transformation and rebuilds them into more socially valuable "third" places, and provides key data on cost, energy, and sustainability.
Lead / Project management
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Andreas Lechner - Institute for Design and Building Typology / Graz University of Technology
Project partners
· Institute of Structural Design - Graz University of Technology
· Working Group Sustainable Construction – Graz University of Technology
· Institute of Spatial Planning, Environmental Planning and Land Rearrangement (IRUB)
Department of Landscape, Spatial and Infrastructure Sciences - University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
· WMV Immobilien AG
Contact
· Dipl.-Ing. Maike Gold, BSc
· Lessingstraße 25/IV, 8010 Graz
· 0316 873 6291
· maike.gold@tugraz.at
· www.counterintuitivetypologies.com (under construction)
CBT is a three-year research project funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency
FFG
Sensengasse 1
1090 Vienna
Austria
Innovation Potentials for Sustainable Transformation of Commercial and Retail Locations
FFG Project ID: 893554
Nov. 2022 – Nov. 2025
Synopsis
Selected commercial retail and properties provide existing resources for this project’s case studies that will convert and further develop them towards more positive energy, use, and life cycle balances. The currently underperforming properties will be transformed into more active and attractive places of higher experiential density and environmental relevance through multiplication of space and uses in the interior and exterior areas, demonstrating opportunities for more sustainable development of these understudied building typologies.
Summary
Buildings and construction processes cause about 40% of all CO2 emissions and can therefore make a significant contribution to tackling the biggest problems of our time - climate collapse and loss of biodiversity. This requires multiple paradigm shifts, which this project addresses in a little-researched segment of the planning and real estate sector: the countless retail, retail park and commercial properties that have been built on greenfield sites and connected to individual transport in recent decades.
Can remodeling and rebuilding these substantial building inventories integrate more circular economy approaches? This approach seems counterintuitive at first, since for most of these properties only demolition, recycling, and renaturation seem reasonable, yet this project would like to use selected properties to develop scenarios that build on these existing resources and their infrastructure connections and think them toward more sustainably positive energy, use, life cycle, and social balances. Through the multiplication of space and uses - communal, logistical, sports and leisure-related programs, temporary/experimental residential and office uses, etc. - these properties could not only be structurally redesigned and further developed and equipped with state-of-the-art technologies, but also create socially sustainable, identity- and community-creating "third" places with the corresponding quality of stay and long-term profitability for society as a whole.
In this cooperative R&D project, possible building and energy solutions for the climate-neutral city will be developed based on these monofunctional and underperforming building stock of the last decades. Based on architecturally and urbanistically sophisticated conversion and further development scenarios, existing buildings, conversions and extensions will be designed, modeled and computationally verified as an integrated and combined system for climate-neutral buildings and neighborhoods.
The project connects key sustainability goals by building on extensive existing resources, designs the transformation and rebuilds them into more socially valuable "third" places, and provides key data on cost, energy, and sustainability.
Lead / Project management
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Andreas Lechner - Institute for Design and Building Typology / Graz University of Technology
Project partners
· Institute of Structural Design - Graz University of Technology
· Working Group Sustainable Construction – Graz University of Technology
· Institute of Spatial Planning, Environmental Planning and Land Rearrangement (IRUB)
Department of Landscape, Spatial and Infrastructure Sciences - University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
· WMV Immobilien AG
Contact
· Dipl.-Ing. Maike Gold, BSc
· Lessingstraße 25/IV, 8010 Graz
· 0316 873 6291
· maike.gold@tugraz.at
· www.counterintuitivetypologies.com (under construction)
CBT is a three-year research project funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency
FFG
Sensengasse 1
1090 Vienna
Austria
Attemsgasse 11
8010 Graz
· Staatlich befugter und beeideter Ziviltechniker
· Ortsbildsachverständiger Land Steiermark
· NA Bausachverständiger
· Email ·
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Unless otherwise stated, all materials on this website and the ideas incorporated herein, as an instrument of professional service, are protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights belonging to Andreas Lechner, its affiliates or its licensors and all such rights are hereby asserted and reserved. No part of this website may be copied, reproduced, republished, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way for commercial purposes. Any modification or use of the information contained on this website for any purpose not explicitly permitted without prior written consent is a violation of the author’s intellectual property rights and is strictly prohibited.