Since 2015, DI Sebastian Spaun has been managing director of the Association of the Austrian Cement Industry (VÖZ). Before that, he has already led the department on Environment & Technology of the VÖZ for 17 years. 

Other functions of him include being board member of the Austrian Society for Construction Technology (ÖBV) as well as supervisory board member of Austrian Cooperative Research (ACR), a network of private research institutes offering applied R&D for companies.

Having received a profound knowledge to understand ecological interrelation by studying “Land and Water Management and Engineering" at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna, he is nowadays focussing his professional work on the decarbonisation of cement production, resource-efficient construction as well as the creation of long-lasting transportation infrastructure.

RELATED PODCASTS, SOURCES AND LINKS:

• Association of the Austrian Cement Industry (VÖZ) - https://www.zement.at/ 
• Planning guide for energy storage concrete/thermal component activation - https://www.zement.at/service/publikationen/energiespeicher-beton
• Addressed study about the CO2 uptake in cement-containing products by the IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute - https://www.ivl.se/download/18.34244ba71728fcb3f3f8f9/1622457897161/B2309.pdf
• Study on the global carbon uptake by cement production by Xi et al. (2016) - https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2840
• Addressed prefabricated concrete ceiling system with integrated thermal component activation - https://www.innogration.de/ceiltec-deckensysteme/
• Photo credit: derfritz (on behalf of BDÖ)

VENUE

The podcast was recorded on the 24th of March at the office of the Association of the Austrian Cement Industry in Vienna, Austria.

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Professor Benjamin Kromoser is the head of the Institute of Green Civil Engineering at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria (short: BOKU Wien). He is a civil engineer and inventor with a close connection to craftsmanship. His research, teaching and practice is oriented towards the best possible use of natural resources in the construction sector.

In his early career, together with Prof. Johann Kollegger (University of Technology in Vienna) he developed a novel, resource-efficient concrete shell construction method, further known as Pneumatic Forming of Hardened Concrete (PFHC). Advantages of this method comprise the significant savings in formwork construction efforts and a substantial reduction in construction time in comparison to conventional building methods. Austrian railways (ÖBB) already successfully used this construction methods to build a concrete shell bridge with a span of 36m as deer pass over the two-track rail Koralmbahn.

Prof. Kromoser’s research and teaching at the BOKU Wien have a wide spectrum, including the automation and digitalisation of constructive production processes, economic and ecologic optimisation of structures as well as the sustainability assessment of buildings amongst others. He facilitates to use materials according to their properties and strives to minimise the environmental impact of buildings considering the whole life cycle. In concrete construction he is concerned with pushing sustainability forward, which reflects in his research on structural optimised concrete structures, high-performance materials in concrete construction and wood-concrete-composite systems to only name a few.

Amongst other awards, Prof. Benjamin Kromoser received the Dr. Ernst-Fehrer Preis at the University of Technology in Vienna in 2015 and the Achievement Award for Young Engineers of the fib in the category design and construction in 2019.

RELATED PODCASTS, SOURCES AND LINKS:

• Profile Prof. Benjamin Kromoser
• BOKU robot laboratory – automated construction 
• BOKU robot laboratory – construction process 
• Instagram account
• Concrete shell bridge

VENUE:

The podcast was recorded on the 18th of May 2022 at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria.

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Thomas Romm is an architect with his own office based in Vienna. He studied architecture at the TU Vienna as well as the TU Berlin and, since his diploma thesis on recycling-friendly residential buildings, he has dedicated his work to the topic of resources within the built environment, putting a strong focus on the environmental impact of planning and construction.

As an expert for circular construction he is involved in the development of large construction sites in the Viennese housing sector. Using Building Information Modelling as one of his tools, he is continuously working on the improvement of the eco-efficiency in mass flows. According to his opinion, current circular economy concentrates too much on deconstruction, whereas essential material flows can actually already be generated and channelled during the realisation of large construction projects.

In addition to his participation in numerous competitions, dismantling as well as construction projects, he also devotes himself to ambitious research projects: He is an initiator of BauKarussell, a cooperation network of socio-economic companies for dismantled building components for reuse.

Apart from his professional expertise, he is also teaching ecology for architects at the Academy of Fine Arts.

RELATED PODCASTS, SOURCES AND LINKS:

• Office of architect Thomas Romm – http://www.romm.at/en/home
• BauKarussell and Social Urban Mining – https://www.baukarussell.at/about-us/
• RCC reduced carbon concrete – https://nachhaltigwirtschaften.at/en/sdz/projects/reduced-carbon-concrete.php
• Seestadt Aspern as one of Europe’s largest urban development projects – https://www.aspern-seestadt.at/en 

VENUE

This episode was recorded on the 13th of February 2023 in Vienna, Austria.

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