International Seminar «Flows and Linkages: Materials and Products for the 21st Century» MCAS

The proposed seminar is focused on exposing and discussing the latest international advances in technologies and tools aimed at contributing to the reduction of the carbon footprint currently produced by the building construction sector, trying to advance as far as possible towards the double ecological and digital transition of the building activity.

Based on the objectives set out in the international Paris Agreement – i.e. to ensure that the average increase in global temperature does not exceed 1.5ºC with respect to pre-industrial values – and in the European Green Deal – i.e. to achieve the objective of a decarbonised Europe by 2050 – the seminar will explore the problem of decarbonisation of the construction sector from a triple perspective:

1) from the point of view of technological innovation of materials and products
2) from the point of view of low embodied carbon building design
3) from the point of view of the use of digital tools for impact minimisation

Three reference institutions will be involved in each of these areas: a) Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability CERIS. University of Lisbon; b) Sustainable Construction ETH Zurich; and c) Institute of Technology of the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. The seminar aims to exchange knowledge and create the basis for research collaboration between the University of Seville and these prestigious institutions.

Speakers + Organization Committee 

Angela Barrios Padura

PhD in Architecture in 2001, Hindex 14 (SCOPUS), is a postdoctoral researcher and supervisor of PhD students. She is currently Full Professor at the University of Seville. She has participated as a researcher and manager in 7 R&D projects and in 11 contracts with companies. She has published 32 articles in indexed journals, 22 in the first quartile. Since 2012 is the director of two collaboration grants, 2 research initiation grants, a postdoctoral contract from the University of Seville, a Margarita Salas grant, and two FPU contracts. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Sustainable City and Architecture, Architecture and Historical Heritage, and Eco-Efficient Rehabilitation of Buildings and Neighbourhoods at the Higher Technical School of Architecture of the University of Seville.

José Luis Bezos

José Luis Bezos was born in Seville in 1969. He graduated as an Architect at the University of Seville in 1996 and obtained the title of Doctor of Architecture (2017) with the thesis entitled “Open devices: open source habitats. Strategies generating open logics and the introduction of the sphere of the user in architecture since the 1950s» He currently performs teaching work as a Professor at the School of Architecture of Seville. He has participated in the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002 and his work has been exhibited, among others, at the international exhibition JAE (Young Architects of Spain). He has obtained numerous awards in competitions, such as the Europan competitions, the European Prize for Urban Public Space, the J5 competitions for Young Architects in Andalusia and, in general, awards in public competitions for project ideas obtained from the different administrations.

José Dinis Silvestre

Associate Professor with Habilitation at the Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Georesources of Instituto Superior Técnico from Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, and researcher at the ‘Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability’ (CERIS). PhD in Civil Engineering from the same institution, being since 2009 and expert on assessing the sustainability of materials, construction systems and buildings. Carried out Life Cycle Assessment studies with more than 25 national manufacturers of construction materials and in national and international projects. Co-authored more than 90 ISI journal papers and 3 books, coordinates 2 research projects with foreign partners, and participates in 1 international research project (having participated in other 2 as subcontracted consultant and in 1 Erasmus+ project) and in 13 national research projects (and in 5 more already concluded), related to sustainability and energy efficiency of building materials and construction solutions. Supervised 2 PhD Theses and co-supervised 4 others and supervised 10 Integrated Master Theses and co-supervised 4. Was President of the national Standardisation Commission CT 171 «Sustainability in Buildings» between 2017 and 2019 and is a member of the Technical Commission and verifier of the DAPHabitat System – Registration System of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for Habitat.

Guillaume Habert

Guillaume Habert is associate professor for sustainable construction at ETH Zurich. He leads a group of scientists, engineers and architects that aim to ground sustainability in the disciplines of the built environment. This involves interdisciplinary works and draws on Life Cycle Assessment, urban metabolism and material science. More specifically, recent work focuses on the use of excavation materials to develop circular and climate neutral building materials and the quantification of the regenerative potentials brought by an increased implementation of biobased materials in construction sector. He is an alumni from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and holds a PhD in structural geology. Prior to his venue in Switzerland, he has worked in France, Brazil and USA successively in the fields of geology, material sciences, civil engineering and sustainability sciences. He is associate editor of international scientific journals which cover the wide span of his research activities: “Material and Structures”, “Buildings and Cities” and “Sustainability”. ETH Zurich, Switzerland, is one of the leading international universities for technology and natural sciences. ETH Zurich has more than 18’500 students from over 110 countries, including 4’000 doctoral students. ETH Zurich regularly appears at the top of international rankings as one of the best universities in the world.

Emanuele Naboni

Dr Emanuele Naboni is a Lecturer at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, School of Architecture, Module director at the SOS School of Sustainability in Milan, and Associate Professor at the University of Parma. He practices, teaches, researches and publishes in the field of Regenerative Environmental Design, and City and buildings Design for Climate Change, with a focus on linking Ecosystems and Humans via Digital Design. Emanuele worked with ETH Future Cities Lab in Singapore (2019), EPFL Lausanne (2016-17), Southeast University in Nanjing (2018), Architectural Association in London (2014), University of California Berkeley (2013).

He was invited lecturer at TU Delft, TU Munich, UC Berkeley, Aalto University, National University of Singapore, The University of Nottingham, Arup World Research and is an external reviewer at the Bartlet and IAAC. Emanuele was sustainable design leader at the “Performance Design Studio” of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP (SOM) in San Francisco for a number of years (2006-2010), a Researcher for the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and Post-doc at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley (LBNL) (2005-2012). He collaborates on project bases with BIG, Arup, Kengo Kuma, William MC Donough, Mario Cucinella Architects, Autodesk and NASA. He won international design competitions and prizes for sustainable design teaching and published more than 80 scientific publications and monographs with Routledge, Taylor and Francis, Riba and Details.

Reyes Rodríguez García

PhD in Chemistry in 1999, is Full Professor at the University of Sevilla at the Higher Technical School of Architecture. She teaches both Bachelor’s and Master’s courses around the knowledge of materials and products. They specialize in the characterization of materials of and for construction, looking for ways to know both their properties and test adjustment protocols to optimize knowledge of them in the built work and in rehabilitation. In this sense, she has directed three doctoral theses and more than 20 TFM and TFG.

She is a founding member of the TERRAND association and her scientific contribution in the last 5 years is summarized in 18 publications (publications in journals, book chapters and contributions to conferences), participation in 3 R&D projects and 3 contracts.

Carlos Tapia Martín (Speaker and Organizer)

PhD. architect and Professor (tenured full-time civil servant) at the Department of History, Theory and Architectural Composition in the Higher Technical School of Architecture in Seville, Spain. He belongs to the Network of Sociospatial Studies RESE (University of Antioquia, Colombia) and of the Institute of Architecture and Building Science (IUACC) at the University of Seville. In addition, he is a researcher at the group OUT_Arquias, investigation in the limits of architecture. He investigates the ‘symptoms of contemporaneity’, and at this moment, he develops two related projects: ‘Critique and Epistemology of the dream of the future city’ and ‘Space and Negativity’. Currently, the journal Astragalo, Culture of architecture and the City, ascribed to the University of Seville and the CAEAU-Buenos Aires, is under his co-coordination.