Recap of breakout-session The Science Behind Your Future Home
The breakout session The Science Behind Your Future Home explored innovations shaping sustainable living spaces. Jochem Galama’s visual summary captures key themes, including eco-friendly materials like fungal-based alternatives, advances in architectural engineering, circular building, next-generation home batteries, localized food production, and solar energy technologies. This illustration highlights the fundamental science driving the homes of tomorrow. Click on one of the images below to go to the complete (interactive) visualization.
Mission specific innovation system
Simona Negro, Associate Professor at the Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development, spoke in her key note from a mission specific innovation system perspective and introduced the social innovations that are needed in order to achieve the transition towards a circular society.
Futuristic Fungi
Han Wosten, professor of Micorbiology, talked about fungi in his pitch. His contribution focused on biomaterials made of fungi and their contribution to reducing CO2 emissions and energy use. He also showed that different materials can be made from these fungi and that perhaps in the future houses can be grown from fungi on construction sites.
Circular Building
The pitch by Sanne Bours focused on circular building. Bours is affiliated with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable development. Circular building aims to go from a linear make-use-dispose economy to closed-loop production and consumption.
Smart Facades
Alessandra Luna Navarro is an assistant professor from Delft University (TU Delft) and a chartered engineer. Her pitched introduced smart materials that can be used for facades of buildings.
Future Home Batteries
Peter Ngene, Associate Professor in Materials Chemistry and Catalysis, focused in his talk on possible technologies that future home batteries could be based on.
Food of the Future
Jan Beuning, founder of TastyBasics, shared his vision on the food of the future. Food consumption, also at home, will have to contribute to the long-term interest, to more healthy years. At Tasty Basics they make all their products based on Whole Foods. They don’t add or remove anything from this base. Unprocessed ingredients, hence whole nuts, seeds, kernels, legumes, vegetables and fruit, form our base.
Solar PV Systems
Sara Mirbagheri Golroodbari, affiliated with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, talked about solar energy. She argued that integrating Solar PV systems is needed to meet today's global challenges.