Foreword

     

Buildings are an essential element of the built environment created for providing quality of human life. Humans in developed countries spend in average more than 90 % of their life in buildings. Construction and operation of buildings belong to the biggest consumers of primary materials, energy resources, and high quality water. The environmental impact related to building construction and operation represent signifi cant proportion in total environmental burdens caused by human activities. All this seems to be evident. Even by this knowledge we don’t see in architecture, in building industry, by major part of stakeholders enough real positive steps for sustainable built environment. There is a still high need for development of new technologies and approaches. There is a high need for use of environmentally friendly materials and advanced construction solutions together with the application of integrated design approach considering all essential aspects of sustainability within entire life of building. Our conference Central Europe towards Sustainable Building, this year with subtitle Sustainable Building and Refurbishment for next Generation, tries to bring new ideas for built environment and at the same time creates a platform for valuable discussions and networking. It is already the third one in three years period, after successful CESB07 and CESB10. This year the conference is organized in a close co-operation with SB13 in Munich (April 2013) and SB13 in Graz (September 2013). Together these three conferences can show and compare positive examples and discuss the weak points on sustainable building developments especially in the area of central Europe. The main goal is to speed up the implementation of best ideas. All this three conferences are members of a broader family of regional conferences held in 2013 around the world, one year before the world event SB14 to be held in Barcelona next year.

The main topics of this event are:

  • Sustainable refurbishment of existing building stock
  • Industrial heritage regeneration
  • Low-tech and high-tech materials and technologies for sustainable buildings
  • Integrated building design
  • Decision-support tools and assessment methods
  • Sustainable building in education
  • Urban planning
  • Infrastructure

Scientific and organizing committee is very proud to have the possibility to help to spread the knowledge in these areas of sustainability. This book contains 237 papers carefully prepared by authors from 37 countries. In parallel, an electronic version is published with extended versions of the papers. A day before start of CESB13 we organized the YRSB13 – Young Research Forum on Sustainable Building for doctoral students. This event was initiated and developed by iiSBE – International Initiative on Sustainable Built Environment with the goal to develop discussion platform for young researchers in the fi eld of sustainable building. We would like to thank to all the authors of papers for presentation of their work on the conference. Thanks to their effort the required high level of quality of this publication and conference itself was achieved. All abstracts and papers were blind peer reviewed thanks to active participation of members of Scientifi c Committee and other reviewers.

We also want to thank to Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Civil Engineering and to international co-organizers iiSBE, UNEP, CIB and FIDIC for their support. All support is gratefully acknowledged.

A special thank is addressed to all members of organizing committee especially Kateřina Sojková, Terézia Němcová, Jana Hořická and Jan Růžička for their effort in organizing this event. All above mentioned help and support were necessary for successful organization of the conference and publishing of this book. And we do hope that it will help in dissemination of sustainable building techniques into everyday construction practice.

In Prague in May 2013


Petr Hájek, Jan Tywoniak and Antonín Lupíšek