DTU's international magazine is focusing on how both buildings and entire cities can become more climate-friendly and better places to live.
More and more of the world’s population now live in cities. Construction is growing rapidly as a result. At the same time, the construction industry is responsible for a large swathe of the world’s carbon emissions.
One of the main themes of the new issue of Technologist is how to create more sustainable buildings. One way—explored in one of the articles—is by designing sustainability into the choice of building materials. For example, a number of residual products and materials can be reused in concrete elements, helping to reduce the carbon footprint of the concrete.
One of the participating experts from DTU, Professor Lisbeth M. Ottosen, is involved in this field of research, including the project known as ZeroWaste Construction, and the Circular Ocean project. Here, for example, experiments have been conducted using worn-out fishing nets from Greenland as reinforcing in concrete instead of adding polymers.
Other examples include the possibility of designing entire urban districts where buildings, power and heating supplies, infrastructure and electric vehicles are integrated into an ingenious interaction of energy production, storage and consumption, as is the case in the DTU-led EnergyLab Nordhavn.
Read the entire feature on ‘sustainable buildings’ on the Technologist website.
The other main feature in the magazine is about photonics and how light research may help find solutions to some of the challenges facing society, such as massive energy consumption by data centres and how LED technology can create better and more efficient lighting.
As always, the new issue of Technologist contains a lot of other interesting reading material—from ultrashort tech news to in-depth articles and stunning infographics.
Read the Technologist online, where articles are regularly published along with other interesting technology news, or order the print version of the magazine.