Report on the Holcim Foundation Fellowship Europe in Brussels 2025
The Holcim Foundation Fellowship digital publication documents an intensive two-week programme in Brussels, co-led with ETH Zurich, that explored strategies for accelerating Europe’s “Renovation Wave”. The Fellowship brought together early-career professionals from across the continent to examine how policy, finance, and culture can align to make adaptive reuse the default approach in the built environment.
Through fieldwork, site visits, and dialogues with leading practitioners, the Fellows investigated how to overcome systemic barriers within Europe’s construction sector. Working alongside Olaf Grawert and Josiane Schmidt of ETH Zurich’s station+, Saba Carmel Meidany and Luisa Pastore from the Holcim Foundation, and a network of experts including &bogdan, 51N4E, noAarchitecten, Democo Group, Whitewood Asset Management, and the Building Performance Institute Europe, the group developed a collaborative framework to align incentives across regulatory, financial, and socio-cultural dimensions.
In highlighting the Fellows’ proposals and reflections, Designing Incentives for Change illustrates how the Fellowship itself serves as a model for systemic collaboration—where shared learning, experimentation, and dialogue generate scalable outcomes for a more resilient and regenerative built environment.
The publication presents this “playbook for change”, outlining practical measures such as local Offices for Renovation, fast-track permitting for reuse, digital infrastructure for building data, and ESG-aligned financing to support circular construction at scale. It captures how diverse disciplines—from architecture and urban planning to finance and policy—can coordinate efforts toward Europe’s 2050 carbon-neutrality goals.
