On the last day of the Festival of the New European Bauhaus, the InnoRenew CoE celebrated the week-long event’s festivities in Izola with a Wood4Bauhaus event, connecting science with art.

Dr. Andreja Kutnar, InnoRenew CoE director, summarized the discussions that took place at the Vatican conference last week that was attended by the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“For me it was a big pleasure to be sitting at the conference in Vatican, listening to several speeches and in all of them the word wood was used,” Dr. Kutnar said.

“Five years ago, when we were establishing the research institute InnoRenew CoE in Slovenia, we could only dream about this, and now the whole word is talking about it. The New European Bauhaus is focusing strongly on the built environment, and last week the discussion at the conference was focused on connecting all stakeholders from around the word and together discuss the needed changes for lowering the harmful emissions.”

A strong message from the Vatican conference was that this is not just a problem in Europe, but it goes beyond, and that we in the Global North, should consider how our actions affect the Global South. Climate change is something that concerns us all. Further it was emphasized that more education about building with wood is needed in order increase the use of the material in construction.

The event continued with Uwe Kies, Secretary General of InnovaWood, and Kris Wijnendaele, Technical Director of the European Panel Federation, presenting the Wood4Bauhaus alliance which aims is to connect different organization and showcase that wood is a material that provides solutions to the climate crisis.

“We created the Wood4Bauhaus Alliance as a joint channel for dissemination to demonstrate the real solutions and innovations already existing in our sector and to communicate with everyone interested about the positive impacts that wood and engineered wood products have on the environment,” said Uwe Kies.

“When New European Bauhaus was presented, we saw the opportunity for the wood sector, and with the right circular approach, we can improve the built environment and turn it into a carbon sink,” Kris Wijnendaele highlighted.

Dr. Iztok Šušteršič, research group leader for sustainable building with renewable materials, presented the process of building the new InnoRenew CoE building, and Dr. Rok Prislan, acoustics laboratory leader, demonstrated how science and art can be linked using the example of music and acoustics. Further two wooden instruments were presented – a wooden harp – Mercury, by creator Primož Oberžan that was played by the wind, and a wooden organ, created by the musician and student Matic Jančar and played by Aarne Niemelä from InnoRenew CoE.

InnoRenew CoE is also hosting the Charm of Wood traveling exhibition, which will be hosted at the InnoRenew CoE building until the end of June.

Participants had the opportunity to take a guided tour of the institute’s building and see its state-of-the-art analytical equipment for innovation and new building product development.