The achievement of Germany's climate and sustainability goals - largely influenced by the major environmental impacts of the construction sector in Germany - depends on whether our government takes responsibility for the preservation of our livelihoods from now on, and in doing so also takes the construction sector to task.

The land consumption by settlements and transport, which is unjustifiable given the near stagnation of the population, endangers biodiversity and water cycles, leads to global warming and, from a regional perspective, causes heat deaths and reduces the proportion of land that serves as CO2 sinks (forests, moors, meadows) or for food security (agriculture). New developments may only be permitted if there is demonstrably high land pressure, i.e. in municipalities with increased influx. To compensate for new sealing, developers must unseal land in communities with high migration, which thereby experiences an upgrading.

Building with existing stock is subject to too many requirements that hinder implementation, even though it has been proven that it is the means of choice for drastically reducing CO2 emissions and material consumption.

Under evaluation and with the financial support of our cooperation partner, this publication is dedicated to the protection and expansion of the building stock and thus indirectly also to land protection. It attempts to meet the challenges of this building task - so relevant for our future - and to offer approaches to solutions. Through the development of a query system, the potential and the worthiness of preservation of an existing building as well as its preservation effort can be intuitively and approximately assessed.

We are pleased to have found in the people of the Building Department the "citizens:inside" who, following the principle of cooperation, bring with us environmentally consistent and resource-saving building into their "company", the Archdiocese of Cologne, in their working and living time.

We thank them for their good cooperation, commitment and support of our research.

Text: Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Annette Hillebrandt (abridged)

Author(s):

Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Hillebrandt, Annette; Sonnborn, Christina; Haselwander, Janluka; Mahzia, Majd; Masfaka, Omar; Mazur, Justyna; Öhmann, Christiane; Steffen, Pia

                                                                    last edited on:          01.08.2023