Tillmann Klein is this course’s lead; he will introduce you to the course and you will see him at the beginning of each module. The lecturers who will accompany you along are Marcel Bilow, Thaleia Konstantinou, Mo Smit, Els Leclercq, Ulf Hackauf, Alexander Wandl and Arnout Sabbe. Sylvia Marinova will manage discussions and answer all your questions. Continue reading to learn a little bit about them.

Tillmann Klein is a Professor for Building Product Innovation at Delft University of Technology and leads the Circular Built Environment Hub at the Faculty of Architecture. He organises the international façade conference series “The Future Envelope” and is editor in chief of the scientific open access Journal of Façade Design and Engineering. From 2015 to 2018 he was a guest professor for Design and Building Envelopes at the TU Munich. From September 2005 he headed the Façade Research Group at the TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture. Between 2008 and 2016 he was the director of the façade consulting office Imagine Envelope b.v. in The Hague. He completed his PhD in 2013.

Marcel Bilow is an Associate Professor at Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment and head of the Bucky Lab. He teaches building construction and product design for more than 20 years. Marcel is an expert on connections, products and materials use. He has a hands-on approach in research and education, especially within the field of façades, experimental prototyping and production techniques. Besides his academic activities, he ran an office for façade engineering and is co-author of more than 15 books. Waste is a lack of imagination is the phrase that has inspired him since his early education and always keeps him thinking out of the box.

Wait, what is a Bucky Lab?

The Bucky Lab is a mobile workshop which provides a variety of tools to be used by the students. Learn more by following this link.

Thaleia Konstantinou is an Assistant Professor at the Chair of Building Product Innovation at the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology, where she also completed her PhD research in 2014, developing a tool to support the decision making of energy upgrade strategies. Currently, she focuses on energy efficiency, circularity, façade design and building products, integrated approaches for the decarbonisation of the built environment. Some of the research projects she participates in are “2ndSkin: zero-energy refurbishment module” and “Beyond the Current: user preference tested design solutions for energy-efficient housing renovation”.

Mo Smit is an architect and works as a graduation tutor, coordinator and researcher at the Chair of Architectural Engineering at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology. In her function as project architect for the Central Government Real Estate Agency, Hootsmans Architectuurbureau and Architekten Cie, she has broad experience in sustainable architecture projects that are designed in cross-functional teams from the outset. Currently, Mo focuses on the research field of circular neighborhood development and the involvement of communities within the design process.

Els Leclercq is an urban designer and researcher. As a research fellow, she participates in various research projects on the circular built environment at the Faculty of Architecture of Delft University of Technology and AMS Institute in Amsterdam. In the field of circularity, she focuses on innovative processes to sustainable urban development. She is particularly interested in how decentralised circular approaches can address global and local societal issues in which active citizens engagement, datafication and digitalization (or the ‘smart city’), and a just and sustainable city have a central position.

Ulf Hackauf is a senior teacher and researcher at the Chair of Environmental Technology and Design, Department of Urbanism at Delft University of Technology. He is the coordinator of the Urban Metabolism graduation lab, core teacher at the master program Industrial Ecology and works on a PhD research on the relation between space and metabolism of urban neighbourhoods. From 2007 to 2014, Ulf held a position as teacher, researcher and program coordinator at The Why Factory (T?F), a group headed by Winy Maas, where he co-authored several books of The Why Factory Future Cities publication series and worked as a guest teacher at ETH Zurich and IIT Chicago.

Alexander Wandl is an urbanist and senior researcher at the Chair of Environmental Technology and Design at Delft University of Technology. His research focuses on developing sustainable urbanisation, using an extended territorial metabolism approach and integrating (gis-supported) methods and tools from different disciplines. As scientific coordinator of the Horizon 2020 financed research project REPAiR, he is at the forefront of developing spatial strategies, which support the transition towards a circular economy. He specifically focuses on the challenges related to the sustainable development of dispersed urban areas and peri-urbanisation processes in Europe.

Arnout Sabbe is a doctoral researcher at the Chair of Environmental Technology and Design, part of the Department of Urbanism of Delft University of Technology. His research aims at expanding the concept of urban metabolism towards planetary metabolism, investigating and visualising the global system dynamics of resource stocks and flows. Furthermore, he works on the European H2020 research project “CINDERELA”, focusing on developing new circular business models for more sustainable urban construction.

Sylvia Marinova is the coordinator of this MOOC. She holds a MSc in Environmental Science with specialization in environment impact and has experience with research in the field of industrial ecology. Presently, Sylvia is involved in the development of online courses related to the Circular Economy at Delft University of Technology.