Renovation as a Sustainable Alternative

In urban development we need to pay greater attention to regeneration and renovation of the existing housing stock. Due to the simple fact that 90% of the existing stock will still be in use in 2050. The potential for creating better homes, communities and cities for people by upgrading and improving standards of living for many millions of citizens awaits action. To keep us on this track while taking The New Urban Agenda to the crucial level of implementation the VELUX Group and IFHP have established a partnership with exactly this agenda in common.
 

“At IFHP we advocate Housing for All to support inclusive cities. This is only possible if we look both at building new and renovating existing stock. In our collaboration with the VELUX Group we wish to investigate innovative new ways of planning and combining new with old stock to support the development of more sustainable and liveable cities”.

Anette Galskjøt, IFHP CEO

To IFHP as well as for the VELUX Group it is important to ensure affordability and replicability when refurbishing. The huge pressure on pricing exclude citizens and is socially unsustainable. This will furthermore hinder a diverse and resilient community which again will impact the development of the entire city. Housing for All is crucial to sustain a cohesive and inclusive city and the project, which the VELUX Group has been undertaking in the Garden City of Bon Air in Anderlecht, Belgium commits to exactly this agenda. In short, Velux has committed to refurbish one single house within an affordable budget, which has convinced the housing association to replicate the solution to more than 80 other houses within the community. The project is focused on creating healthy and affordable homes.
 

The partnership between the VELUX Group and IFHP will in the time to come investigate how advocating healthy homes can be both affordable and an essential contribution to develop a healthy community. The VELUX Group supports IFHP’s presence at the Habitat III conference where the UN assembly will endorse the New Urban Agenda. This will pave the road for urban stakeholders to develop and implement appropriate and sustainable solutions. Michael K Rasmussen - Senior VP Brand at the VELUX Group – will present the business case of the RenovActive house in Bon Air at the IFHP Summit in Rotterdam in November. The workshop discusses how renovation projects can be made healthy, affordable and reproduced in market scale.
 

“With the RenovActive concept, and other full scale experiments, we test how it is possible to transform the European existing buildings stock into healthy and sustainable living spaces, without compromising energy efficiency and costs”

Michael K. Rasmussen, SVP Brand

Check out the blog post from IFHP’s participation in the Healthy Building Day 2016 here.
 

About the VELUX Group

For 75 years, the VELUX Group has created better living environments for people around the world; making the most of daylight and fresh air through the roof. Our product programme includes roof windows and modular skylights as well as a range of decoration and sun screenings, roller shutters, installation solutions and intelligent home controls. These products help to ensure a healthy and sustainable indoor climate, for work and learning, for play and pleasure.

We work globally – with sales and manufacturing operations in more than 40 countries and around 9,500 employees worldwide. The VELUX Group is owned by VKR Holding A/S, a limited company wholly owned by foundations and family. For more information, visit velux.com.

About RenovActive

The RenovActive project in Brussels is a full scale test of how to is to prove a large scale replication of financially viable renovations across Europe. The estimated renovation costs associated with RenovActive meets the tight budget framework of social housing in Brussels and the requirements set up in the Energy Performance of Buildings (EPB) standard.

The concept consists of seven design elements, which can be applied individually. The affordability is based on the proven quality of each element as well as the different solutions’ ability to be reproduced, allowing economies of scale to take effect.