Dr. Karen Butina Ogorelec, InnoRenew CoE researcher, attended the BIOARC project kick off meeting, held in Munich, 5–6 June 2025.

The meeting was hosted by the project coordinator, the Technical University of Munich (TUM), and the event marked the first official gathering of BIOARC’s twelve partner organisations from eight European countries.

BIOARC sets out to bridge the gap between agriculture and construction by developing sustainable alternatives to conventional building materials. Using residues from crops like sunflower, rice, wheat, and hops, the consortium will prototype and test a new generation of bio-based products – insulation boards, acoustic panels, wall boards and modular partitions – tailored for test deployment in four diverse European bioregions.

It is a new Horizon Europe-funded initiative aimed at transforming agricultural by-products into high-performance building materials.

At the meeting a project overview was presented and activities in all work packages were discussed. Additionally, a guided visit to the exhibition “Tree, Time and Architecture!” at the Pinakothek der Moderne’s Architekturmuseum der TUM, was organized, which is in line with the vision that BIOARC shares with the New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative.

The kick off meeting concluded with a clear set of action points to guide the next steps and set the BIOARC project into full motion over the project’s remaining 35 months.