The EU-funded AMBIENT project kicked off in June in Madrid aiming to develop a scalable European ecosystem for advanced materials procurement. The recent heatwaves in Europe have brought the effects of climate change to the forefront of society highlighting how extreme climate events place increased pressure on cities, infrastructure, and citizens’ wellbeing. In this context, AMBIENT seeks to respond with climate-resilient, energy-efficient and inclusive solutions.

AMBIENT is founded on the principles of the New European Bauhaus initiative, linking social inclusion, sustainability and aesthetics with advanced material innovations. By connecting these principles to the more technical/innovative elements of sustainable public procurement AMBIENT seeks to lay the groundwork for transforming urban spaces into climate-adaptive environments, identify unmet procurement needs in climate resilience, energy efficiency, and public welfare, foster market dialogue through Open Market Consultation, matchmaking events, and demand–supply gap analysis, promote innovative advanced materials with functional, circular, and aesthetic qualities, enable knowledge sharing and capacity building for public buyers, supported by training, guidelines, and digital tools, and prepare future innovation procurement procedures that integrate sustainability, circularity, and standardisation pathways into procurement strategies. The University of Primorska is a project partner in AMBIENT and contributes to Work Package 4 (WP4) – Innovation Procurement Knowledge Hub, where it leads two tasks supporting the development of knowledge-sharing activities and tools for advancing innovation procurement. University of Primorska is one of AMBIENT project partners, mainly contributing to the innovation procurement knowledge hub, and supporting the development of knowledge-sharing activities and tools for advancing innovation procurement.

The project will be supported by the experiences of the New European Bauhaus Community of Practice within the Big Buyers Working Together project. The CoP’s pioneering work, seeing neighborhoods as living labs for innovation and community participation, highlighted the great potential of connecting sustainable public procurement to NEB. AMBIENT will be able to use some of the knowledge gained there to empower public authorities to act as catalysts for market transformation. At the same time, SMEs, startups, and research institutions will gain clearer routes to market, while citizens will benefit from more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable public spaces.

To achieve its aims AMBIENT will develop a robust, structured knowledge base of public sector needs and systemic barriers for the uptake of advanced materials that enable climate resilience in the face of extreme climate events. The project will also identify, evaluate, and align existing advanced material solutions with public-sector resilience needs, bridging the gap between demand-side needs and supply-side innovations. The results of these efforts will then be used to enable and empower public buyers to act on validated procurement challenges by providing the tools, strategies, and capacity-building formats needed to initiate innovation procurement processes, particularly those fostering the adoption of advanced material. In all cases it will make sure that these processes meet climate resilience needs and align with NEB values.

Project coordinator Raquel Ares (senior manager, SILO) concludes, noting that “AMBIENT seeks to demonstrate how collaboration can drive meaningful innovation. By bringing together public procurers, researchers, industry and innovation experts from across Europe, we are creating the conditions for advanced materials to become part of the next generation of sustainable and resilient public infrastructure. I look forward to seeing the project empower public authorities with the knowledge, partnerships and tools they need to make innovation procurement more strategic, accessible and impactful for citizens.”