EventsBuilding for longer – The sustainability of our living spaces

Building for longer – The sustainability of our living spaces

Lamia Messari-Becker

Chair of building technology and building physics, University Siegen

Event from
19 January
2023

Event

Topic

Club of Rome member guest at the Oskar von Miller Forum

“Worldwide, construction is responsible for about 30% of CO2 emissions, 40% of energy demand, 50% of resource consumption, 60% of waste production and even 70% of soil sealing. Moreover, no other sector is as strongly interconnected with other branches of the economy as the construction sector. None of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be achieved without the built environment. Building is extremely environmentally relevant, economically powerful and plays a decisive role in shaping our social living space,” says Messari-Becker.

Civil engineer Lamia Messari-Becker addresses the role of the building sector and its concrete potential for national and global sustainable development in her presentation.

Lecture in German

Lamia Messari-Becker

Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lamia Messari-Becker is Professor of Building Technology and Building Physics at the University of Siegen. From 2001 to 2009 she was a research assistant at TU Darmstadt, where she completed her doctorate in 2006. She was then head and partner in an international planning company from 2009 to 2013.

She was and is also a member of numerous political and scientific advisory boards, such as the advisory board of the IBA Thuringia from 2016 to 2019, the Federal Government’s Council of Experts on Environmental Issues from 2016 to 2020 (Merkel cabinet) and the Federal Government’s Expert Group on the Future of Construction from 2017 to 2022 (Merkel and Scholz cabinets).

She has been a member of the Club of Rome International since 2020 and of the Zukunftsrat Nachhaltige Entwicklung Rheinland-Pfalz since 2022. She is an expert of the Bundestag on construction-related legislative initiatives and hearings. At the same time, she has been an expert for the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Scholz cabinet) since 2022.

Photo Lamia Messari-Becker ©Thomas Mueller IBA Thueringen

Work

Lamia Messari-Becker’s work in teaching, research, practice and knowledge-based policy consulting focuses on resource efficiency and sustainability in construction and urban development, climate protection instruments and emissions trading in the building sector, circular construction, life cycle-based planning methods, neighbourhood approaches, climate adaptation in cities and infrastructure, and municipal climate protection.

photos lecture © Astrid Eckert