EnginSoft , is an Italian consultancy specialised in computer-aided-engineering. It has experience of contributing to the development of low energy buildings, under the EU-funded DIRECTION research project.

Achieving nearly zero energy consuming cities: this is the goal of three large scale district renovation projects. They are currently being tested in Valladolid, Spain, Genoa, Italy and Kartal - Istanbul, Turkey.

Urban mining is increasingly being taken seriously by industry because it gives access to materials—such as expensive metals used in electronics—that are buried in waste tips and landfills.

The NuOffice in Munich is an office building and one of the showcases of the EU-funded project DIRECTION . The first building phase was completed in 2012, the second and third will be completed in 2014 and 2015.

Much effort has been put into its planning and construction to reach this high-level of sustainability, which makes it the most sustainable newly erected office building worldwide , according to LEEDS standards.

To make a building sustainable, taking into account its climatic conditions is key. No better examples than the three showcase buildings under the EU funded  DIRECTION project.

Sustainable buildings partly depend on control strategies to be energy efficient.

Coastal areas offer great challenges when balancing the need to protect natural habitats, with the requirement of human and economic activities . Dikes, for example, may not constitute the solutions of the future.

Carlos Bárcena, head of R&D Projects at the Spanish construction Company  DRAGADOS .

Energy efficiency has become a key objective in the current context of increasing energy demand, decreasing resources and global warming. Key to efficient energy savings, however, are users' awareness and behaviour.

The building sector has a significant impact on the European economy and the environment. It represents about 9% of the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) and provides 18 million direct jobs.

The city has a climate that is good for agriculture : one fifth of Turkey's fruit and vegetable exports and more than 30% of its greenhouse areas come from just this one region.

Each year over 3.5 million tourists from all over the world visit Pompeii to admire the ruins left by the eruption of the Vesuvius that, in 79 AD, engulfed it together with the nearby city of Herculaneum.

In the city, the famous Cabanyal district which had been home to a local fishing community for a long time, has recently been transformed into a testing ground for numerous energy efficiency techniques.

In architecture, there are two kinds of sustainability: one simpler, smaller, and ethical in its relationship with the environment and with people; and another which is “fashionable”, used as a label in a speculative way, without an understanding of what it really means.

Maguy Soldevila is a former art teacher. Some years ago, she quit the frenzy and the pollution of the French city of Lyon to move into a typical house of the 1960s, in the small village of Sail-sous-Couzan.

The Turkish city of Antalya, on the country’s southwest coast, is perhaps best known internationally as a holiday destination. But as one of Turkey’s largest cities, Antalya is home to around 2.

Cities, with their concentration of services, economic opportunity, mobility and social interaction, have proved endlessly attractive to humans.

Buildings stand at the epicentre of the climate change and sustainability debate, as discussions at the recent COP26 conference demonstrated.

In the world of invention, innovation and design, very little goes to waste. And in today’s ideas-hungry world, the achievements of decades past are all ripe for reimagination.