UKGBC at Futurebuild 2025
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, FutureBuild will take place from March 4-6, 2025, in London. This year’s theme, Impact, underscores two decades of driving positive change in construction and community development.
FutureBuild brings together around 15k professionals committed to sustainability, innovation, and collaboration in the built environment – architect, engineer, contractor, policy makers – and offers insights, cutting-edge products, and networking opportunities to support sustainability goals.
In partnership with: Mitsubishi Electric UK, Interface and Chetwoods Architects, we are returning to Futurebuild with our award winning stand, where you can learn more about our work, and our network. As part of the 3-day event, we are participating in two main stage events, and leading on three panel discussion as well as hosting a materials workshop on stand. See below for our full activity calendar.
Day 1 – Tuesday 4th March
12:00-12:45 How the circular economy and degrowth can avoid catastrophic tipping points
We have known about ‘limits to growth’ since at least 1972. We know that society’s use of materials for all purposes has increased from 7 billion tons in 1900 to 92 billion tons in 2017, and this is just not sustainable. We can recycle as much as we can but if we keep trying to grow GDP no matter the environmental and social costs, we risk missing our climate targets and triggering catastrophic tipping points. We then try to put a price on nature that doesn’t prohibit growth. Thinking ‘circular’ goes beyond waste and influences every decision that we make particularly for those working in the built environment. Time for an honest conversation about where we should be in 12 months? By 2030? by 2035?
Chair: Smith Mordak, UKGBC
Panel: Dr David Greenfield, SOENECS; Elwyn Grainger-Jones, Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute; Teresa Domenech, University College London
Day 2 – Wednesday 5th March
13:30-14:15 How resilient is the UK built environment to climate impacts?
A session around the UKGBC Climate Resilience Roadmap, with a sneak peek at the roadmap content looking at how resilient and vulnerable the UK built environment is to climate impacts, including results of the Roadmap research as well as key insights. We will explore ‘where should we be in 12 months / 2030 / 2035’ as we will tease the actions and recommendations.
Chairs: Hannah Giddings, UKGBC; Macarena Cardenas, UKGBC
Panel: Ashely Bateson, Hoare Lea; Christine Cambrook, Buro Happold; Anna Oxenham, Mace
Location: Buildings Impact Stage
14:30-15:20 Material Matters Workshop delivered by Chetwoods Architects (UKGBC Stand)
Chetwoods Architects dive into all things sustainability when it comes to materials, including embodied carbon, health and wellbeing, and the circular economy. Information and exploration of a range of exciting material samples for an interactive session where you can challenge yourself to pick out the more sustainable material options, and identify the red herrings.
16:15-17:00 The Futurebuild Conversation – Achieving our low carbon future? Why aren’t we there yet?
As we transition to our low carbon future we find ourselves at a pivotal moment as it is only 25 years to 2050 when we need to get to the legally binding target of reducing carbon emissions to net zero. So what are the opportunities and the barriers?Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning are major consumers of energy in any building and the HVAC equipment that is designed and installed over the next 5 years is likely to still be in use in 2050. That means that the decisions we all make now on both new-build, and more importantly retrofit must align with those net zero goals if clients are to avoid ending up with stranded assets. Yet the technology that can help on the road to net zero already exists.
Chair: Dr Anastasia Mylona, Technical Director, CIBSE
Panel: Yetunde Abdul, UKGBC; Steff Wright, Gusto Group; Chris Newman, Mitsubishi Electric
Location: Futurebuild Arena
Day 3: Thursday 6th March
10:30-11:15 What is a ‘Regenerative Place’? and how do we get there?
The word ‘Regenerative’ is being used with increasing frequency across industry, with a growing number of perspectives on what it the concept means. There is less understanding so far, of how it translates into practice and especially how we retrofit our homes and urban spaces to bring the vision into reality for UK communities. The session will focus on Improving biodiversity and green space; offering health and social value benefits, strengthening climate resilience
Chaired by: Joanne Wheeler, UKGBC; Anna Hollyman, UKGBC
Panel: Miles Lewis, Clarion Housing Group; Carl Walker, Hoare Lea
Location: Placemaking Impact Stage
13:30-14:15 Towards a nature-positive built environment
A reflection on the built environment’s role in the global transition to a nature positive future. This session will outline our current understanding of what nature positive entails and focus specifically on addressing embodied ecological impacts from materials. It will showcase best practice examples and key principles to make a difference.
Chair: Kai Liebetanz, UKGBC
Panel: Aaron Grainger, Buro Happold; Julia Baker, Mott Macdonald; Becky Gordon, Interface
Deep Dive into Supply Chain Decarbonisation
UKGBC will be showcasing Supply Chain Decarbonisation on our stand at Futurebuild, in a series of five sessions. We will be sharing details of our work to date including the aim, scope, plans, activity to date and our desired outcomes from this workstream. UKGBC programme leads will be heading this event, with support from Partners and Task Group members in attendance.
In addition, attendees will have the opportunity to contribute to our testing of initial ideas for action, shaping our developing plans for future work. Whilst also learning how, as stakeholders in the built environment, you can get more involved in helping to drive progress.
The Deep Dive event will take place during the following time periods:
Tuesday 4 March 11:00-12:00, 14:00-15:00
Wednesday 5 March 11:00-12:00, 14:00-15:00
Thursday 6 March 11:00-12:00
Related
UKGBC at Futurebuild 2024
An Introduction to Sustainability in the Built Environment (online)
Innovation Showcase – Materials Passports
Embodied Ecological Impact in the built environment – an exploratory workshop
