The New European Bauhaus: a creative and transdisciplinary movement in the making!

The climate crisis is the largest global challenge of all times. The building sector accounts for ~40% of global carbon emissions, so upscaling decarbonization of this sector is crucial. The New European Bauhaus launched by the European Commission has instigated a broad grassroots movement for the Green Deal to co-create a new paradigm for cities and regions. An important cornerstone of NEB will be bio-materials and nature-based solutions, such as engineered wood products, which can deliver a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative impact when used more widely buildings. The reason is that trees are true carbon pumps, extracting carbon from the atmosphere and converting it into solid biomass, which makes forests a key factor in the climate equation. Raw timber harvested from forests can store carbon for decades and centuries in long-life products. The forest-construction chain can thus potentially be upscaled to a major carbon pump, establishing timber cities a major carbon sinks and a major lever for climate restoration, as is described in a number of recent modelling studies by the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research. To advance this movement, more research, innovation and demonstration of engineered wood solutions are needed and must be better connected with all important disciplines in the built environment, such as architecture, the construction sector and urban planning. To transform our cities into sustainable, beautiful, inclusive places, we need to bring together high-tech and no-tech.