Healthy Building Movement

The Healthy Building Movement (HBM) aims to actually enable the sustainability transition focused on health in collaboration with SMEs. Whereas the Healthy Building Network (HBN) mainly focused on creating awareness and a network, HBM will facilitate the transition to practical implementation. Transitions are gradual but start with awareness and the desire to change. With regard to healthy (re-)construction in particular, we see that this is the case: due to the COVID-19 pandemic, health in buildings is on the agenda, HBN’s network is growing: 35 SME parties have signed endorsement letters and the largest municipal and regional governments within HBM’s project area have signed a “Letter of Intent” underlining the importance of healthy buildings. At the same time, it is clear that other preconditions for the desired transition, such as parameters, tools, projects, validation, matchmaking between supply and demand, are still lacking in most cases. What is important here is that healthy (re-)construction is part of the sustainability transition: no one-sided focus, but rather making the connection with other sustainability themes such as circular economy, bio-based construction and energy transition. As an example: healthy materials contribute to a better indoor climate and at the same time have a higher residual value. This holistic approach makes HBM unique. Thanks to knowledge sharing in the network and the development of a new assessment tool, the innovation in expert pools in living labs, supported by the universities, will make a major impact. To boost these innovations, a more targeted focus on public and private stakeholders in NL and GER will also ensure lower barriers and an increasing market demand, which can be served thanks to innovations from the SME expert pools and concrete projects. HBM focuses on the GER-NL border region but also establishes connections with other initiatives all over NL and GER.