STEIN Ceramics Association endows TU Graz professorship

The Association of the Stone and Ceramic Industry supports an endowed professorship for sustainable building at Graz University of Technology with a focus on life cycle-based sustainability assessment as well as greenhouse gas-free and climate-robust construction projects. The appointment will be made in summer 2021

Graz University of Technology and the Association of the Stone and Ceramic Industry have recently reached a contractual agreement on the establishment of an endowed professorship for “Sustainable Building”. The trade association will finance the professorship for a period of three years, with the option of extension, in accordance with Section 99 of the Universities Act. TU Graz will provide academic positions, administrative support and infrastructure for research and teaching.

The focus will be on the further development of life cycle-based sustainability assessment methods and the implementation of largely greenhouse gas-free and climate-robust construction projects. The professorship will thus make a significant contribution to achieving the Paris climate targets and thus also to implementing the UN Agenda 2030 action plan.

The topic of the circular economy, i.e. the reuse or recycling of building components and materials, is a top priority for the sustainability of buildings in the view of both contractual partners. “The aim is to understand buildings as material resources of the future and to build them in such a way that both the long service life of the buildings and the reuse of the materials at the end of the building’s life (recycling, upcycling) are made possible. This offers great opportunities for innovation, especially for mineral building materials such as bricks and concrete – whether as a storage system for renewable energy during the use phase or as a pioneer in recycling. As a trade association, we want to drive this forward and we have found a competent research partner in Graz University of Technology,” says Robert Schmid, Chairman of the STEIN Ceramics Association.

“One thing is clear: climate protection will not work without involving the construction industry,” says Harald Kainz, Rector of TU Graz, and continues: “This sector is doubly affected by climate change – on the one hand as a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and on the other hand, buildings themselves must be adapted to the effects of climate change. This requires the interdisciplinary pooling of all forces, from materials and energy research to architecture and civil engineering. In view of global climate developments, we at TU Graz are very aware of our role as a forward-thinking workshop for the future of society and we are committed to using all our scientific expertise to find future-proof solutions for sustainable development. We do not exclude ourselves from this and want to be climate-neutral as a university from 2030. We are therefore all the more pleased about the establishment of the endowed professorship for sustainable building.”

TU Graz is already working intensively on the topic, for example in the working group for sustainable building at the Institute of Technology and Testing of Building Materials or in the part-time university course “Sustainable Building”, which is offered jointly with TU Vienna. Several research groups deal with pressing sustainability issues in the construction sector and work, for example, on ecological materials, self-sufficient energy systems and the reduction of the CO2 footprint or water consumption. The establishment of the “Sustainable Building” endowed professorship now underlines the sustainability of buildings as an independent scientific discipline and is intended to provide strong impetus in the area of knowledge transfer for teaching and construction practice.

Contact point for the building materials and construction industry

The new professorship in the field of “Sustainable Building” is intended to create a central point of contact for the building materials and construction industry at TU Graz. By bundling research activities on the topics of sustainable construction as well as climate protection technologies and climate change adaptation, these new tasks are to be taken into account. In teaching, the central task of the Chair of Sustainable Construction will be to integrate the fundamentals of sustainability into civil engineering education. Specifically, the aim is to anchor the topic in all relevant curricula at TU Graz.

About the STEIN Ceramics Association

The STEIN Ceramics Association represents companies in the Austrian building materials industry and has been involved in the research field of “sustainable building” for more than 15 years. The development of modern, low-CO2 production technologies is just as much a core task as the promotion of climate-neutral construction technologies and construction methods in order to enable sustainable, climate-neutral and future-proof construction in the first place. The promotion of a relevant endowed professorship at Graz University of Technology is therefore the logical continuation of this path. Further information can be found here.

About TU Graz

Graz University of Technology is the most traditional technical and scientific research and education institution in Austria and has played a central role in the international research and education network for over 200 years. In its five key areas, the Fields of Expertise, TU Graz delivers top international performance and relies on intensive cooperation with other research and educational institutions as well as with business and industry worldwide. TU Graz has seven faculties with around 100 institutes and employs around 3,600 staff. 13,500 students from around 100 countries study at TU Graz. Building on scientific Bachelor’s degree programs, TU Graz focuses on research-oriented Master’s degree programs, which are increasingly offered in English, and PhD programs. The area of “Sustainable Building” is anchored in the Field of Expertise “Sustainable Systems”.