The METABUILDING LABS project is a five-year Horizon 2020 EU funded Innovation project whose main objective is to unlock potential, improve competitiveness and boost market impacts of the European construction sector’s small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) offering an Open Innovation Test Bed (OITB). Through a Single Entry Point, which is reflected in an Open Innovation Digital Platform (metabuilding.com) SMEs will have access to a powerful innovation ecosystem with more than 100 testing facilities across 12 EU countries : AUSTRIA · BELGIUM · FRANCE · GERMANY · HUNGARY · IRELAND · ITALY · POLAND · LUXEMBOURG · SPAIN · SWEDEN · TURKEY. A large consortium of 40 partners across 13 countries have joined forces to provide the whole construction sector with easy access to this wide network of high value testing facilities including Laboratories, Test Benches, Pilot Buildings, Living LABS and innovative services allowing stakeholders to develop and test their innovations and building envelope solutions for next generation buildings.
The METABUILDING LABS OITB can leverage on the innovation ecosystem that has being kickstarted and set-up in its sister project METABUILDING (INNOSUP H2020)and advertise its services on the METABUILDING digital multi-sided platform which is conceived as the meeting point of the innovation ecosystem for the enlarged built environment sector bringing together innovation actors, clusters and platforms on regional, national and European level. Especially, the integration of regional clusters is an important feature to reach potential clients, notably SMEs. Both projects make a proactive use of the metaclustering and innovation ecosystem concepts to disseminate and relay the OITB offer. metabuilding.com platform will be the ubiquitous digital backbone for the enlarged built environment EU innovation ecosystem, including cross-sectoral representation and backed by several EU high-level industrial platforms like notably ECTP (European Construction Technology Platform), European Aluminium (the association representing the EU aluminium industry) and other entities partner of METABUILDING.
In order to reach the COP21 goal of nearly-zero energy, zero emission buildings, which is essential for climate change mitigation and adaption, sustainable building solutions are required. To boost the rather slow-paced innovation and unleash the full potential of innovation in construction, it is crucial to strengthen SMEs as one of the most important innovation motors.
To achieve this aim, various specific objectives have been defined for the project:
• Build a future-proof, upgradable, competitive, sustainable, and inclusive European Construction Sector Innovation Ecosystem and OITB network.
• Stimulate investments in building-envelope innovations and new technologies by providing test beds evidence on material and system performance for companies and investors.
• Contribute to the enhancement of technical and environmental quality of building products in Europe, by providing innovation support to technology developers.
• Unlock the potential of SMEs by providing access to prototyping, testing and certification services and infrastructures, in order to improve the quality of new products and solutions.
• Test user acceptance and environmental requirements of products and co-develop solutions implementing a “pilots as Living Labs” strategy
• To fully implement a metaclustering approach in the 12 countries represented in the METABUILDING LABS project as the pro-active solution of how to bring SMEs into the OITB ecosystem
• To harmonize and upgrade lab test framework and facilities in a holistic set of adapted services for a better readability of envelope materials; technical characterisation adapted to the new smart generation of technologies.
• To develop a standardized, high quality, fast, affordable, replicable, Open Source, Open Access, Open Data 1:1 scale, real conditions building envelope testbed.
