ONE UN - Housing at the Intersection of Resource Efficiency and Resilience (WUF13)

Thank you, everyone so much for bearing with us.
There's just a little bit of technical difficulties on my side, so I'm very glad to be able to open this event.
I'm just going to do a quick tech check just to make sure that all of our speakers are here.
Most of them are in person, so I can see them in our lovely front row, but we do have one online.
I'm just going to double check.
Edna Guenther, are you able to hear and see us? Potentially if we could just open up your camera and hear from you.
Yeah.
Actually, I'm able to hear you, but there is no option for me to turn on the camera interestingly enough because usually I have the video icon, and this does not exist here for whatever reason.
I have no idea.
Okay.
I've got a wonderful video tech team in the back, so I'm just going to look at them and see if they are able to only offers audio.
It's Chad and raise hands and resources, but no video, interestingly enough.
Potentially, we have to upgrade you to a speaker level or something like this.
Yes, maybe, maybe.
It could be.
I'm very glad that we tested this before we officially started.
Thank you so much for bearing with us.
Let's Hi.
Hello.
Hello.
We're just doing something in the back.
Perfect.
Very, very happy to see you and welcome you to virtually to Baku and very happy to finally start this wonderful event which has been hosted by Yen Flores.
Before I hand the floor to the director, I just want to quickly give a few words.
Housing sits at the center, as I'm sure all of you know, of the biggest challenges of our time.
It's where climate crisis happens, it's where climate change is experienced, where resources are consumed and where resilience is built or undermined as well.
Too often we approach these conversations separately, and here we're going to be discussing housing, climate, resources all together because cities don't experience these challenges in isolation and people are facing all these challenges together.
Um, so today, we're going to be exploring an important question.
How can we deliver housing that uses resources more efficiently while also creating stronger, more resilient communities? We're joined here by a fantastic group of speakers in the front row as well.
And I hope today's conversation with all the audience as well, there definitely will be a moment for Q&A and for us to discuss together.
We should all leave here with new ideas, but practical pathways for collaboration and action.
Well, with that, I give the floor to the director, over to you, Eel Tad.
Thank you so much, Jessica, and I'm happy to be able to join online.
This is not the optimal setting, but still better than not joining.
And as you already mentioned, the focus here is on the resource resilience imperative.
So how can we combine those? And therefore, we as the United Nations University Institute, focusing on environmental resources are really very much interested in shaping this topic together with you all, all the other speakers, but all the other participants in the session.
So please also reach out to us after the session.
I would like to welcome everyone who prepared the session from habitat, global ABC, so everyone who shaped this.
I'm really convinced that we need a new urban agenda.
Actually, just two days ago in Germany, they launched the high tech agenda, and we miss buildings there because, well, I don't know.
Maybe buildings are not categorized as high tech, but I think it's not always about high tech, but also low tech or just tech that is important and where we need collaboration and sometimes really the focus is missing for housing and that's therefore, I'm really pleased that we have this session here.
And we know that the building sector is one of the world's largest consumers of resources.
And also of emitters of greenhouse gases.
This is where the leverage sits.
And that also means that we have to focus on climate, but also the importance of the stability of urban settings.
And therefore, I looking forward to a discussion around resources, around resilience.
Circularity is in the center, very often, we only think of recyclability, but we do not build from waste, for example, or we do not think in saving waste, waste of energy, waste of material, waste of financial resources.
That also means that we have to and to shape resource stewardship from a really comprehensive perspective, focusing on environmental resources, on the social dimension, also humans, the resource of our lives and of all the inhabitants of cities, of urban and rural areas.
That also means that we have to focus on equity that we really also think long term.
And therefore, I'm looking forward to the discussion today and thank you, Attica, Attica, for supporting me.
She's also here and thank you, Jessica, for moderating.
Back to you, Jessica.
Thank you so much.
I'd like to give you a big round of applause.
Before we begin our discussion, I'm just going to very quickly introduce my colleague from UN Habitat.
Estevan Leon, if you'd like to join us at the podium for our second opening remarks, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Jessica, for moderating.
Welcome to the last day of the Wolf, the World Wan Forum.
I must thank our partners from U and you for the invitation and for the dialogue.
I think that that's very important.
The issue is super relevant, especially considering the financial crisis we are all going through.
Maximizing resources is the only way to support our cities to become more resilient.
And especially the housing sector.
So I would like to welcome you for this session.
Thanks to you and you and thanks to our partners for making this happen.
And let's hope that the discussion is reaching what we are looking for.
Thank you very much.
Wonderful.
So if I could please ask Estevan to stay here and come up onstage, and I'll also ask Gulna to join us up onstage as well.
And is it possible to bring Edel Tread onto the screen or Wonderful.
We can see and hear you quite well now.
Good.
Perfect.
Perhaps I'll start with you, Gulnaa.
Gara joins us from the United Nations Environment Program or UNP.
A first question to you is the building sector is central, as we've heard from our two lovely welcoming speakers to both climate mitigation and urban resilience.
Where do you see the greatest opportunity today for accelerating the transition towards circular and resilient housing systems? Thank you so much, Jessica.
And great to see Adele you online.
We definitely miss you in person.
But it was great.
We met last time in Lausan.
So I'm uh I'm chief of the sectoral transition section at the climate change Division at UNEP, United Nations Environment Program.
So we're actually looking into the circularities across the high impact sectors, what relates to environment and climate, building, schooling, urban energy, and then we're also looking into multi level governance because we are really trying to accelerate the change also through the subnational actors because we know everything is happening in the cities.
I'm also head of Secretariat of the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, we just had with Bruno discussion, remembering ten years ago when at Cop 21 in 2015, Global Alliance for Building Construction was established, so it's ten years.
Today we have actually 398 member organizations.
Including national and local governments.
We have actually 38% of the membership is private sector, so we're really working on a very practical level and also universities, so we are really pleased to have you and you Florence, which is led by Adel to be one of our active really leaders in this process of decarbonizing decarbonizing environment.
We had a wonderful event as a global ABC assembly last year in Dresden.
We also managed to see beautiful laboratories, great laboratories where scientists working on finding a new innovative way for decarboniizing cement, for instance.
We're looking, of course, into different materials and all different topics.
But I think in Dresden, it was great to see all the work of materials.
Definitely, Jessica, building materials is one of the very, very important parts because out of the building sector, 70% is housing.
Right? 70% of housing, and also what important also to mention just as we are connecting to the Vb forum discussion, and what we really very glad to hear is that recognition of, I mean, being very clear about where all these issues will be coming in because, uh, 80, 90% in many countries in low income countries are actually self built or informal settlements.
I mean, it's not always the same.
So often self built is actually done legally as well, but in any case, so definitely, if we speak about the building materials, and we're speaking about all different building materials, of course, we know in terms of the carbon footprint, cement and steel, the sectors which bring most of the kind of carbon emissions, but, uh, we have to be very tailored to the concrete countries and cities where what kind of materials, you know, we can work on and, use, most importantly, use the local materials.
I just bring maybe one example on the building materials side.
For instance, we're working right now and in some projects together with the inhabitat US as well, like in countries like India, Bangladesh, Segal, Ghana.
We are really trying to promote the use of the building materials.
For instance, in addition, right now, we are constructing a neighborhood of housing for a transgender community.
It's vulnerable group community where we're using First of all, we're working with the local architects, together with the local community where you're using low carbon materials, the local materials, but also trying to use the design.
I think we just had a chat that architecture design, this approach of sufficiency, building more with less is very important.
I think that's one important area where we definitely can do quite a lot together in this community.
It's great to have here at Wolf a all different experts, lots of architects, lots of materials, colleagues.
This is the first topic.
The second topic, definitely passive cooling thermal comfort.
I mean, in some countries in the North, of course, it's about protecting from the cold, but in most of the low income and middle income countries, it is about addressing extreme heat and while we are doing, for instance, we have a big program the name B cool, which we're implementing in India right now.
It's implemented in five states of India, so it's actually getting many hundreds, millions of people where addressing this issue.
Many people especially those who do cell build, they cannot really afford to put all the efficient ACs like here in their houses, it's just too expensive and electricity costs are too expensive.
So one of the approaches we're using is like white roofs, urban design, design of the housing.
So I think connecting to the urban design to ensure the passive cooling is absolutely this is kind of the second very important topic.
And the third topic, we are looking into, again, something which we were very happy was discussed so much at the Woof here during this week, urban planning, but also connecting to all the rest of infrastructure because I think traditionally we handled urban planning as a separate sector and the housing as a separate sector.
Buildings are separate, urban planning is separate.
Especially today with the situation of the energy crisis, you also need to use buildings as an energy source, the wastewater as an energy source.
Then you need connect them into one grid and ensure that the grid is stable.
This is what we also working right now.
We'll be actually launching big initiative at London Climate Action Week.
Exactly the integrated urban planning so that the housing is treated as a part of that city infrastructure, neighborhood infrastructure, and so that we ensure the quality of life through this connection and better urban planning because you can create better quality of life, thermal comfort also through using the urban planning materials.
This is something what we discussed at the urban planning workshop at our last big event of the Global Alliance.
Which was Lausan Buildings and Construction Summit, which brought over 500 experts in buildings.
It was now three weeks ago.
So all these three priorities really brought lots of spotlight.
So we're really happy to continue working with global ABC community, but with the wider community as well on these three priority topics.
Thank you so much, Kara.
Ageel, I saw you nodding on the screen there.
So perhaps you can come in and talk to us about how housing, materials, climate resilience is all connected and how the resource nexus perspective can help us better understand this.
Yeah, thank you so much.
So thank you, Grenada, and I wish I was with you, but also nice to be able to be part of this panel online.
Yes, as Guara already mentioned, we have different topics on our Rada.
It's climate, it's energy, and we at U Flores, we have this nexus perspective and Guara, you also mentioned that urban planning was a separate topic, infrastructure, housing.
That's also about the nexus and very often and that's more a mathematical problem actually, if you only optimize one dimension, you might even worse the other dimensions.
This is our perspective that we embed in all our research in all our activities.
Here, as you can see, housing as connected systems, we just have some numbers that Gunara already referred to.
Jessica, you referred to that as you referred to that already, where we see the impact of climate, the impact of energy, or the material we speak about sand mining that has a huge impact also on livelihoods and very often in low income countries.
Waste that is not used or that is just not thought of also a waste of energy waste of material, a waste of water.
We very often also do not think of the relevance of water when we speak of building houses and also space, we use small space and the question is, how can we use space more efficiently? Schools are only used for part of the day and many buildings we have are only used part time.
Can we also develop sharing uh, um, sharing concepts, for example, for reducing the use of space.
And finally, also biodiversity that is also important.
So all the plants, all the animals that are destroyed whenever we seal also land.
And our focus is always to come in with one perspective, for example, the material perspective, where we then try to identify material with less CO two emissions.
But then we also look at the trade offs, trade offs this might have on energy, trade off this might have on waste.
What are alternatives? Can we also look at different ways of using the buildings? That also then has this behavior dimension.
The people come in.
What do they want and also what Guara what you mentioned, who builds the houses? If they are self build, then you also need different technologies, different approaches.
Therefore, I'm very happy that just two weeks ago, three weeks ago during the global ABC Annual Assembly, actually, we launched Hub UNUHub in Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, where we specifically look into informal settlements and they are all self built and the perspective is different.
We also have been to see the whole area, not only housing, but also schools, but also all the infrastructure connected to it.
This is where we see very often that people say, Oh, yeah, climate is a topic or now the energy crisis, this is a topic.
But our approach is always to say think long term, think at the interconnectivity of all those resources, and then do some backcasting and then optimize.
Maybe so far for now, and then I can continue later.
I assume that another round of discussion.
Back to you, Jessica.
Thank you so much and absolutely discussion will definitely continue.
A very quick question for you, Esteban before we go to a very special screening.
For you, Esteban, we've been talking about housing quite a lot and the new urban agenda.
I'm curious in about 1 minute or less, how housing can become a stronger entry point for linking resilience, climate action, and resource efficiency in cities.
Thank you.
1 minute or less is impossible, especially for a Latin American.
You really spared me too.
I mean, if you consider that housing is basically 80% of the infrastructure in cities, not linking it will be a mistake.
I mean, it's natural that most of the resilience building efforts have to go through the housing sector.
But in addition, I don't know.
I mean, the new urban agenda in summarizing a little bit and maybe simplifying even more has five components.
I mean, it's urban planning, urban governance, urban financing, and its local implementation and national policies.
That's the five pillars of the new urban agenda.
So, I mean, when we were working on that and we started dividing that and trying to decompose that into the housing sector, definitely, we need to start working on maximizing resources, as I said at the beginning, we need to make sure that housing is one of the safe places for the citizens when they have a stoke or a stress.
And if we define resilience as the possibility of responding, bouncing back and building back better, we cannot omit housing? I mean, that's one aspect.
That was 1 minute maybe.
The second minute is that in most of the crisis situations, most of the housing recovery is done by the population themselves.
So we must make sure that they have the tools, the knowledge, the capacity to make it better, right? And I think that that's an important issue that we cannot either omit either.
So basically, what we have is to provide citizens with the capacity of recovering themselves because as I said, they are the most efficient way of acting.
In your habitat we develop a manual, a guideline or a methodology, or I don't know how to call it, that it's reconstruction of self reconstruction of housing after crisis situations.
And there are some aspects that are key.
One is that you have to have locally available materials and they have to be, you know, they have to be able to recycle materials and use efficiently these materials.
But the other is also they have to have the knowledge, the capacity to do it in a safe way.
And I can tell you and I can talk hours here about how, you know, after a crisis situation, you see this self reconstruction going on, and in so many cases, they are building the same vulnerabilities that they had before, that I think that our task as international community is to support these processes.
First line of response in any crisis situation is at the local level, and it's the population themselves.
The authorities, of course, support, but the population are the first ones.
Let's start treating them as assets, not liabilities.
Let's start making sure that they have the capacity to respond.
Let's make sure that they know what materials are safe to use.
Let's make sure that they have the technical capacity to reveal themselves because this is what usually happens.
My last point in my very long minute, is that when you respond to a crisis situation, most likely whatever happens in that period will remain later.
I never seen and I worked many years on shelter response.
I never seen that fictitious transition between emergency shelter, transitional shelter and housing.
Most likely when you respond to one, they remain like that forever in most of the countries.
I mean, I can give you plenty of examples.
So if we nailed it and make sure that they respond in a sustainable, resilient manner, then we are changing the paradigm.
I didn't touch yet the other global agreements because the new urban agenda is just one agreement that is under the umbrella SDGs.
But you also have the Paris Agreement for climate change.
You also have the SND framework for disaster risk reduction.
You have other agreements that we must translate that from the global level to the local level.
That's the challenge that we have now, how do we make sure that all these discussions that happen at the global level and international conference and all these agreements that are done by governments, how do we make sure that they are translated at the local level? Sorry for the long minute.
Wonderful.
I think that was a perfect long minute, but it really needed that you the time to be able to illustrate those key messages.
To really highlight what the opening speakers have been saying, the resources, the challenge that we face is gigantic, yet we're doing it for people and I'm very excited to be able to share with you a wonderful, if I could just go to the next screen, public film screening.
If we could add dim the lights a little bit because we're about to be in for a treat.
We're watching a film here.
And we're actually joined by the director, which is super exciting because he'll be able to join us on the panel shortly and answer any questions you have.
So please take it away.
Thank Everything comes from somewhere.
Matter is neither created nor destroyed.
It transforms.
Across time and place, many humans have found ways of honoring this principle K and traditions that forge unbreakable bonds with waters, lands, and life forms.
But not everyone followed this wisdom.
The idea that humans could dominate took over, paving the way for extractive relationships of consumption and waste.
I am E.
I'm a material broker.
My job is to recover materials from buildings that are being deconstructed or renovated and make sure they recirculate.
Without us, the city would stagnate or follow the old practice of building, demolishing, and throwing away.
All that valuable material dump to the big hole in the ground.
What a shame.
Every day, materials and objects are salvaged from urban mines across the region.
Buildings, bridges, highways, you name it.
If it has to come down, we make sure nothing goes to waste.
Once something is set to be dismantled, its parts are listed in the material registry, along with when and where to find them.
This building didn't pass its last inspection.
The status says they've started mining.
We're looking at two months to recover 30 steel beams, 46 timber rafters, and ten aluminum windows.
A real treasure trove.
This is the Material registry, an open source tool for tracking materials and components.
It used to be just citywide, but with more places joining, it's quickly becoming multi regional.
I can access data on materials used in all kinds of buildings, their structural condition, history, and origins.
It's a significant improvement from just a few decades ago.
The material economy has undergone nothing short of a complete 180.
Just over 25 years ago, construction was responsible for nearly half of all materials extracted and a third of total waste generated globally each year.
It also accounted for half of all energy and a third of all water consumption.
To make things more concrete, China used more cement 2011-2013 than the US used in the entire 20th century.
But after the historical signing of the planetary Material Act in 2029, it became clear that transforming the material economy was key to safeguarding the livable future.
This change can be felt in your daily life.
For instance, Montreal skyline has 90% fewer cranes than 30 years ago when around 150 cranes were visible on the horizon.
Though once considered a sign of economic health, fewer cranes now means that we are making the most of existing buildings.
This meant quickly retrofitting the 29% of office towers left vacant after COVID 19.
In 2023, we could count the number of local material depots in Quebec on one hand.
Today, there's around 1,500 across the map, supported through donations and door collation.
The number of depots and other life cycle oriented approaches grew exponentially once social and ecological impacts were factored into prices.
From this changing economic conditions, the average price of new materials has doubled.
All of this more resulted in a dramatic decrease in material imports.
Gypsum, a common construction material used in drywall and plaster, can be reused and recycled infinitely.
It used to be simpler to import 50,000 tons of gypsum from Morocco than source the same quantity of residuals from Quebec.
Today, 75% of gypsum is reused through innovative transfer techniques, while 24% is recycled into new panels.
Only 1% goes to waste.
Usage has also declined with the rise of biobased alternatives like hemp board.
In 2028, cities started partnering with local forests and mountains.
Montreal works with fiber forests and stewardship cooperatives as all surrounding forests have gained legal personhood.
Bringing materials closer to home makes for more thoughtful decision making.
A survey carried out in 2047 reported that 75% of respondents felt shame when buying new materials from unknown sources.
Measurement is an act of noticing.
To notice is to select, to regard some things as more significant than others.
For this reason, numbers always hide more than they show.
What can numbers tell us about how or why all this change came to pass? The evolution in the stories humans tell about what matter is and why it matters.
Matter feels more alive than it used to.
That's how urban mining began, seeing materials as being on a journey.
Adaptable parts that can take on all kinds of new forms.
It's exciting to see what they'll become next.
The history is made with each new use.
Like buildings or even genes and languages, materials are part of our heritage of who we are as people.
Look, this is a lot more than a window.
It has a story.
And if you trace the origins of the materials, it's lived many lives.
Millions of years of sediment.
It's so much more precious than you used to realize.
The circular economy of construction materials required many actions across different areas of society.
The built environment witnessed sesmic shifts.
Urban mines, drop off points, and material depots replaced traditional hardware stores with material registries providing insight into the global system.
Brilliant new logistical networks were devised to transport resources as needed.
Reuse quickly became the focus once people started viewing materials as allies to be cared for rather than commodities to be consumed.
Culture was an important driver of knowledge and participation.
Champions of the ecological stewardship movement challenged institutions to act and sparked new ones according to emerging needs.
Large scale experiments facilitated by regulatory sandboxes involve the public in prototyping systems.
Not for profit technology was developed to ensure efficiency and affordability.
ReD models of cities, enhanced with data on components form the basis for material registries.
These digital twins provide valuable insight to decision makers throughout a structure's life cycle.
Receipts from depots now include metrics on water, energy, and resource usage, helping the construction sector to track the benefits of reusing and recycling materials.
2025-2013, a cascade of policies concerning materials arose.
Influenced by indigenous legal orders, property of the built environment came with greater responsibilities, making it feel more like stewardship than ownership.
Around the same time that Quebec City prohibited urban sprawl, the Urban Mining Act outlawed landfilling.
These policies helped put an end to waste and triggered the shift towards redevelopment.
The 2030 new material tax reduced demand and funded ecological restoration.
Pension funds and ethical banks rapidly expanded.
Varied interest rates and taxes tied to transition goals fostered important on the ground initiatives such as employee owned construction and design firms specialized in reimagination and reuse.
Space was reclaimed with sustainability bonds and placed in service to the common good.
As climate breakdown reduced people's quality of life, ambitious new forms of planetary governance emerged, like the ratification of an intern carbon budget, a landmark moment for climate justice.
We have to organize ourselves in ways we've never done before.
Humbled by loss and adrift in uncertainty, some found in themselves a new receptiveness to others.
We saw a lot of unlikely alliances, material scientists and waste collectors joining forces to develop new methods of reuse and recycling.
Government and indigenous leaders working together to ensure responsible use of materials for generations.
None of us have ever experienced such widespread cooperation.
How about you, dear viewer? Is this the kind of future you would have liked to imagine? Would you have changed anything? So it's been my absolute pleasure to welcome the creator of this film, Bruno Demers, from the Architecture Without Borders based in Quebec.
So we will also be hearing from another colleague online afterwards.
But over to you first, Bruno.
Hello, everyone.
I would ask the technical team if you can pass on the few slides I brought to talk to you and to say a few words about this incredible journey we've been undertaking with the short film materialise, which means in French, the materialists.
Would you agree with me that we live by raising your hand in a very materialist society? Actually, the case we're trying to make this documentary in this short film is that we're, we're not enough.
We're not caring enough about materiality.
We're focusing on consuming materiality.
We're focusing on the financialization of building components, but we're not caring enough about materials, building components, about the Earth, about resources, and about what would our indigenous peoples in Canada would say about Mother Earth.
Um, I'm looking for the clicker.
Oh, the clicker is there.
I'll try to be quick.
There would be a lot of things to say about this project, this documentary.
I'll make a long story short with some slides that are too long.
It comes from another presentation, but I'll go fast.
I'm the Executive Director of Architecture Without Borders, Quebec.
We are the extension we are the humanitarian arm of the Order of Architects of Quebec, every architect in our province, Quebec, the French province of Canada.
Every architect in Quebec is a member of ours.
So we have a circular economy business called Reco, it's a charity building material reuse center in which we reclaim donated components, and we resell them.
It exists since almost 25 years.
It's one of the oldest in Canada, and we've been actually revamping it, revamping it, rebranding it, and relaunching it At the same moment, we launched the materialist documentary that was created in 2030 23 and launched publicly launched in 2024.
So that's our record center.
So we're deeply involved in what it means to recycle, to recirculate components, especially in the housing sector of Montreal.
We're doing that since 25 years.
And I was asked in my address to explain from where the idea of such a short film came from.
It came from this building that you see here.
This is one of the biggest building in Montreal.
This is a big heritage building.
I think it's 1 million square feet.
It's the Royal Victoria Hospital, the oldest hospital in Montreal and it's being totally remodeled.
They created a new hospital and now it's being remodeled over it will take many years, almost decades.
We've been contacted.
Rico, our circular economy business, we got contacted saying, We have a policy in the provincial real estate agency to try to implement circular economy.
Would you like to partner with us? We ended up diagnostic the old building and reclaiming five to six full containers of building components.
And in many situations like that, were called too late in the process when you want to start to circulate building components, you must start early anyway.
So we started to salvage materials and in the process, we were contacted by the recycling agency of Quebec asking us if we'd like to make a documentary because they had budget.
So we started the conversation about how we could make an exciting documentary and we reached out to Dark Matter Labs and Lienert, two partners of this documentary.
And we quickly moved from a lame boring, normal business as usual documentary to a futuristic documentary that used participatory futurism methodology.
It's a very innovative, very interesting methodology that we use during the project.
So The documentary itself, it's a pilot project in participatory futurism.
We often live in context, and I think it's especially in a context like Wolf.
We work on very concerning issues.
We talk about crises, we talk about emergency.
What types of narratives do we offer to every stakeholder and to the population? Often, those are narratives that are dystopian or that are connected to megalomania or science fiction.
They are not they are not visions of desirable futures.
So in participatory futurism, in such type of processes, we want to mobilize stakeholders, citizens, partners, and co create to cater the type of future we need to plan to reach this type of North Star that we need to go forward and move away from a from anxiety focused types of narratives, showing us that there's no hope and that we condemn to the climate catastrophe.
So those types of narratives connects us to our feelings.
It it connects us to other types of feeling.
We're moving in the other part of the brain and it enables to have more engagement from the stakeholder we need after that in the process we want to implement.
So um, La materialist was the first ever participatory futurism project.
We had partners from all the sectors that are related to the built environment, more than 30 partners and many people in every partner has been involved to co create the scenario, to co create the ideas that have been criize in this project.
Um and we delivered one document that we saw.
Why did we do this documentary? So at first it was because there was a building to demolish and we wanted to document that, and at the end, it became, first of all, to test participatory futurism in the context of circular economy, but it's a methodology that can serve other issues that are related to SDGs, not only the reuse of building components.
So it's a very powerful methodology that we've been testing, and you'll see how it worked.
Um, So we combined some prospective studies of the future with participatory design and with a cultural production that is the video.
The goal is to narrate what by projecting us in 2015, the goal was to narrate the transformation that have been needed to reach that goal.
It's kind of positive, optimistic ritroal planning of what we should undertake to reach such a point in time.
It's been a long process.
This product took a year and a half to do.
It's not just about filming and graphic design.
There has been a cartography of the whole system related to circular economy.
We created the booklets of participation for the stakeholder we were mobilizing.
So it's been um, very holistic approach.
We've been doing workshop collecting ideas and we've been treading after a narrative and there's three voices in the short film, if you haven't noticed.
There's a broker of materials specializing in diagnostic and of building materials.
There's an AI that is narrating what happened during the last decades and there's the Earth that is speaking.
And you can listen to it.
Again, you will notice those three voices more carefully.
There's a multi layer scenario that we've been threading in all that and all this to capture imagination and to be able to make sure that people can believe that this future is a possibility, that it's not science fiction, that we could go there.
So I'll pass quickly.
There's many segments in the video.
So two other goals were to sunsitize about the issues and the perspective of circular economy and construction.
We wanted to change perceptions.
We want to create change in our ecosystem in Quebec, in Montreal about, um, the cultural values we give to building components and to materiality.
So those numbers dates back from two years ago.
So two years ago, we had close to 5,000 um, um, Ven.
Sorry, I don't know the word in English.
More than close to 5,000 people have watched the video.
I think now it's up to ten, 15,000.
It got promoted in a lot of medias.
We had a huge coverage.
It won many prizes worldwide in different short film and film festival documentary festivals.
It had been a big success stories.
Two of our goals were also to be able to mobilize the force, all the the forces of the building sector in Quebec and it has been a success because we got really contacted a lot by people who wanted to work with us and we were already working with the city of Montreal, the government of Quebec.
So it has been a lever of mobilization of stakeholders and it's been also stimulating a lot of business startups in our sector as well.
So I'll stop there.
And since then, the video serves to do workshops about participatory futurism in circular economy.
And I hope it will stimulate our exchanges that will help for the rest of the session.
A lot.
Thank you so much.
We're going to go shortly to a short video, but a big round of applause for that amazing background for the film.
Thank you so much.
We're going to hear from Atika Fusela.
She unfortunately is not able to join us today, but she is with the power of technology online for us.
I'm just going to skip through There we go.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Before I begin, warm greetings to all of you in Baku and online from Singapore.
Unfortunately, due to unforeseen family circumstances, I had to leave Baku earlier than planned and I'm joining the only spirit today.
I would nevertheless like to sincerely thank our colleagues from UN Habitat, Global ABC and all partners for carrying this important conversation forward.
I'm especially grateful to come across first the film, and then the makers of the film, the materialist in the in webs Pal, Bruno de me.
Here we are.
Now, what I find so powerful about the film is that it quietly changes our relationship with buildings and materials.
It reminds us that housing is never just about walls, roofs, or aesthetics.
You suddenly become aware of the systems behind every material choice, the extraction, the transport, the labor, the emissions, the inequality, and ultimately the environmental consequences embedded within the built environment.
Earlier, Professor Edith Harter spoke about the resource nexus perspective, the understanding that housing is deeply connected to energy, water, land, waste.
Social systems.
The film makes these interconnections tangible and human.
And that was also the starting point of the House of No Waste Initiative.
The House of No Waste International Ideas competition was launched by UN U Florence as part of the United Nations University's 50th anniversary last year.
We invited the next generation architects, engineers, planners, scientists, and designers from all around the world to rethink the built environment for what the UN calls a pollution free planet.
What emerged was honestly pretty extraordinary.
We received 927 applications from all over 1,000 authors across 112 countries and regions.
And from these, 225 projects have been included in an online exhibition that we are bringing to the World Urban Forum audience today.
The proposals ranged from adaptive reuse strategies to modular systems made from local waste streams to regenerative infrastructure to climate responsive public spaces to entirely new material systems.
What struck the jury most was not only the technical innovation, but also the mindset behind many of the project.
Many proposals no longer treated buildings as fixed objects.
Instead, they approached housing as something evolving, adaptable, and deeply connected to communities and ecosystems.
One project that especially impressed the jury was transcriptive dwelling from Japan.
The project focuses on a historic wood dense neighborhood in Osaka and asks a very simple but profound question.
What if resilience is not quite about replacing what exists, but about carefully transforming and extending what is already there.
Rather than demolition and rebuilding, the proposal imagines phased adaptive reuse that preserves social memory, local identity, and existing material resources.
Housing becomes something continuously rewritten over time, almost like a living text shaped by residents, climate, and changing needs.
I think the idea resonated with many of us because it feels deeply relevant to the moment we are in.
So much of our current construction culture is based on replacement.
Extract, build, dep, demolish, discard, repeat.
But resilience may require a different mindset.
Repair instead of replace, adapt instead of erases, and learning to see existing buildings, materials, and communities as assets rather than obstacles.
Across the exhibition, we see recurring ideas emerge.
Passive cooling strategies, modularity and disassembly, regenerated and biobased materials, reuse of local waste streams, multi functional public spaces, and stronger relationships between buildings and local communities.
Many projects demonstrated that circularity is not only about recycling, but also about durability, adaptability, resource stewardship, and long term social resilience.
At the same time, the competition also revealed important gaps.
The challenge today is often not imagination.
Rather, the real barriers are frequently institutional, procurement systems, financing structures, fragmented governance, building regulations, and difficulties scaling innovation responsibly.
And perhaps most importantly, resilience and circularity are still too often discussed separately, yet climate resilience cannot be achieved through resource intensive systems indefinitely, and circularity without social resilience risks becoming exclusionary.
That is why organizations like this matter, the transition toward resource efficient and resilient housing cannot happen through architecture alone or science alone or policy alone.
It requires collaboration across institutions, sectors, and skills.
I believe this is where partnerships between you and you, UN Habitat, global ABC, researchers, practitioners, cities, and creators become especially important.
If materialise invites us to reflect on where our current material trajectories may lead by 2050, then the House of No waste Ebion presents emerging ideas that attempt to rethink those trajectories before they become irreversible.
They serve as hopeful and practical provocations that challenge us to rethink how we build, how we live with resources where we are, and ultimately, how we live together within planetary limits.
I hope the exhibition and compendium serve not only as a source of inspiration, but also as a platform for dialogue, experimentation, and future collaboration.
I invite you all to visit it via the QR code below.
With that, I would now like to transition us to the panel discussion where we will explore how science, policy, practice, and collective action can help accelerate the transition toward resource efficient, resilient housing in support of the new urban agenda.
Thank you very much.
Over back to Baku.
I would say thank you, but I know that you are not here, but I know that you're actually online.
So thank you so much wherever you are.
I don't know where the screen is.
But as you said, we're going to go to a quick panel discussion.
We're running a little short on time, but I'm actually really, really curious.
I think this having a film is just such a powerful platform, and I'm so excited that we've got the organizers of this film with us.
I'm really curious if you could talk more, Bruno about creativity and why this is so important as a medium.
Well, creativity, I think it relates to, um, I think it's especially important in discussions like those that we have at Wolf on other platforms to, um, yes, to address issues that are very rational, policies, programs, funding, data.
And this is much of what I've been hearing the last few days as in other type of forums.
Um.
But if we are about to, uh, to build a new future, creativity is key.
Um, I think both in the example of the House of New Waste is I think it's a good example of how architecture as a creative process can be implemented to envision new ways locally to empower communities, uh, to tap into the local knowledge, local materials, to envision a new way to, uh, create resilience and a build environment.
This is true at the local level, but I think it should be more present creativity in large political platform and processes.
Even at the national provincial scale, sometimes politicians and partners are stuck in debate and discussion and creativity could be a lever to mobilize the population towards new narratives, toward new visions of the future and I think this is what is tricky with the climate crisis, and this is the point I was making at first.
Not just the climate crisis, the housing crisis, the climate crisis, other types of crisis we are in a poly crisis critical context.
I think creativity and bringing people participate in participative way in the creation of the future is key if we are serious to move towards solutions that are not business as usual.
Thank you so much.
I'll go to Esteban next.
You've been watching this wonderful film and hearing more about the background around this.
I'm really curious, what were your reflections when you were watching this film? Thank you for putting me on the spot.
This is the first time that I saw the film.
I mean, it's very interesting.
I think that it has components that are very strong.
I'm not going to enter into the philosophical discussion about materialistic issues.
I mean, everything that is not spiritual is materialistic.
But at the end of the day, I think that we have to also acknowledge that the society of consumption is the one that is preventing us to advance in a more sustainable way.
And I don't know why when I was watching the film, I started thinking what's happening in Cuba.
Cuba is one of my favorite places and I will say, I never saw any other place where they are so innovative in reusing, recycling, and working with what they have done in Cuba.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, you see all Cadillacs from 1940s still running with different parts.
You see houses that have been remodeled and expanded and more rooms created from nothing.
And I think that that's something that it's very important for us to acknowledge as well and to see how we can be very creative when we have also some financial crisis and financial problems.
So I don't know why when I was watching, I was thinking, well, that's something that it could be also very interesting to try to capture.
It's not only in Cuba, but in many other places in developing countries where you see that the need force us to be creative.
And force us to start reusing and recycling when you have no more options.
I used to work quite a lot on this type of responses and the most resilient people were the people that had the least things.
So, yeah, it triggered that idea on me on thinking, well, maybe not only looking at the future, but also looking at the past and thinking how they managed to work towards a more resilient world.
I will tell you just one story because I know that my minutes are long.
But I did an evaluation of the building constructions in Samoa.
After a hurricane.
And we decided to start looking at different typologies of housing, and we identified 16 typologies of housing, but we thought, no, I mean, 16 are too many.
So let's reduce this to three.
And we identified the typical Samoan house, the mixed Samoan and European style of housing and the typical or the European style of housing.
When we had a hurricane and I did the assessment, actually the most destruction happened in the European style of housing.
And why? Because they were more modern.
I mean, why it happened there.
And then talking with the communities and having this exchange, we realized that the typical Samoan houses were houses that you could open door windows and let the wind come in and out.
No walls that were confronting the hurricane while the typical European had many rooms and therefore resistance to winds and water and they were collapsing.
That taught me a big lesson.
I mean, while you recognize the indigenous knowledge, you also recognize that they know what they are doing because they've been there for many, many years.
Decades, centuries, and they know how are they going to start building their houses based on nature and the challenge of nature.
So probably thank you.
I think that's something that we should start thinking as well.
I mean, instead of looking so much at the futuristic source, let's look at the past source for a futuristic world.
I think that's something that can be quite strong as well.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
And the same question over to you, Idle.
So your reflections on the video.
What did it make you think about? Yeah, thank you so much.
Also building on what Esteban said, let's look at what we already have.
I just would like to echo that and then I have two more thoughts.
One is, I was thinking, is this now a video that is more pointing to the problem, or is it more opening space for solutions? I feel you really managed this in a wonderful way that I did not feel depressed when watching it, but somehow I felt empowered and that is my one remark.
We need positivity.
While pointing to the problems, we also really need to empower everyone to contribute to this future.
Esteban you mentioned, I think it's a wonderful example.
Let's look at what we already have and then upscale it and just develop some role models for it.
Positivity is my one.
Reflection, and the other is behaviors.
You also said that, Bruno, when you reflected on the video yourself, that we have to look at the different stakeholders.
We need participatory approaches.
I also think what sometimes helps is that we ask questions like, why things don't happen? If we have those role models, for example, why are they not in place in other cases? Maybe it's as you mentioned, Cuba, maybe it's because of scarcity that makes us innovative, so this um the thesis that Schumpeter developed in the beginning of the last century that out of crisis, we have innovations that might really be the case.
What we now also observed with the energy crisis, all of a sudden we develop new ideas and my question would then be, can we also develop those new ideas without a crisis by looking at potential barriers.
These are my two reflections, positivity and barrier analysis.
Thank you so much and back to you, Jessica.
Thank you so much and over to you, Gano for the same question.
I really like the idea of the future orientation to 2000 2050, actually, the global ABC objective is about decarbonizing business stock to 2050.
This is very useful as visionary.
And Probably most importantly, I think this really reinforces the idea that when you look into this building, you see that it's an eternal building and it is with the cost that it is.
But we should not forget that we should be looking into the building materials when we built the building, when we operate the building, and we demolish the building.
I think this is what you looked also into the data.
Right? So looking through the whole life cycle of the building and looking at the materials, what you put into the buildings.
For instance, we also have kind of digital passports for the buildings, working with many countries on this.
Yeah, we shouldn't forget that when we build the building, we should already think about when it will be demolished.
You know, where all this resource go.
We need to know what is inside.
Is it asbestos inside or is there anything else dangerous inside? How are you going to recycle it? So I think this is really this aspect was very important and also the participatory given all different communities, you know, thinking together, visualizing together, you know, what this building will be very, very useful.
So I would be really happy to discuss how we can do this visioning practices with global ABC together.
Thank you so much.
We're nearly out of time, but I want to also ask the floor or everyone here and also online, the same question.
Potentially, you could put this on social media.
This was such an amazing film, such an amazing group of panelists that brought some really nice messages and really thought provoking messages.
How are we going to solve these crises? What kind of ideas that came to your mind or what inspired you when you were watching this film? With that, I want to thank our wonderful panels.
Thank you so much to Adel, Bruno, Esteban, and Gulnaa.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
Hopeful to be here as well.
We're available to discuss if anyone wants to come to meet and talk if you have any questions.
We have one question at the front.
Perfect.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I want to thank all the panelists for your contribution with respect to the facility, especially the housing.
The topic for this year's World of B forum is housing the World.
Have you said something about what is happening in Cooper.
We used to do more recycling materials and what can we do in view of what is happening when you look at shelter, which is a basic needs of life? What can you do to ensure that the country that are trying to encourage recycling are protected, whatever happened because it's about life.
It's about life of people.
You said about 80% of infrastructure is housing.
You said it, and what can we do to prevent such countries trying to emulate practices to ensure we reduce emission, climate change, and everything.
What can UN do concerning this? Thank you very much.
Another short minute.
I think the case of Cuba is very extreme.
I'm not going to go into that one, but in general, is this true that most of the crisis situation or disaster situations happen in the most vulnerable areas.
The poorest of the poor are the ones that suffer most on this crisis.
Why? Because the construction is not solid enough.
Because they are usually sitting on risk prone areas because they have not the opportunity of going to areas that are safer.
So there are a lot of things that we can enumerate on the different aspects that make cities vulnerable.
The most vulnerable parts are the informal settlements and are not usually recognized, and the support goes not to the informal settlements in general.
So we have to change patterns here.
I mean, we have to change modalities, we have to change governance issues as well, and we have to make sure that actually we recognize that one third of the population lives in informal settlements and that we have an obligation with the people.
I mean, this has to be people centered, not recognizing only status of the citizens.
So from one part, I think that we do have a lot to do with the governance issues.
From other part, we do have to do a lot with finance issues.
I'm trying to I mean, I'm aligning here again with the New Urban agenda, right? I mean, finance, governance and planning, urban planning.
And these three components have to go hand by hand.
And in the planning aspect, we have to start reinforcing the fact that we have to build better housing.
And it's not because we have an obligation that we do have with people and with citizens, but it's also because we are as resilient as the weakest of our resilience.
So if we have resilient informal settlements, we are never going to be resilient as a city.
And the moment that we understand that is the moment that we are going to start changing.
And the same applies to any global level.
I mean, any country is as resilient as the whole world, right? And we saw it during COVID.
We saw it in our face five years ago.
We had a global challenge and countries started reacting in different ways and they tried to cover themselves.
But the reality is that we are living in only one world.
So if we don't start taking things seriously and we don't start acting jointly and we don't start stopping this consumption pattern, and we don't stop a burning our resources, we will never change this pattern.
I know I went too high to the level.
But the reality is that it's a change and it's a system and we develop a methodology for urban systems.
We started identifying what system impacting another system because at the end of the day, it's a chain.
The moment that we start doing that and thinking that whatever I do here will have an impact there, and then we will start taking care of ourselves.
And it has to do also with the economy, right? You cannot have so much few people with so much money and have a majority of the world starving.
You can't.
I mean, this is not a model that we can use anymore.
So let's start changing patterns, and that applies to everything, including housing.
I think that's a wonderful note to end on.
Unfortunately, we do have to vacate the room very shortly.
The doors will be locked momentarily.
So if I could give another round of applause to our speakers, and very kindly ask you to follow the instructions of our wonderful volunteers.
Thank you so much, everyone.
Thank you.