Digital Master Builders: Disruptive construction technologies

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs estimates that by 2050 the world's population will have increased by over 2.1 billion people (UN DESA, 2019). Providing housing and infrastructure for them would essentially require building an amount equivalent to what currently exists. It is simply not possible to build in the future the way we do today. To appropriately confront the urgency of the environmental crisis, the building industry faces three immediate challenges: 1) reducing pollution, particularly embodied carbon emissions; 2) slowing the depletion of natural resources; and 3) minimizing waste production. The first challenge refers foremost to embodied emissions (De Wolf et al., 2013, 2016, 2017). The second challenge asks for a reduction in the demand of material used by the building sector, since currently 40% of global resource consumption results in the disappearance of essential virgin materials (OECD, 2018). The third challenge centers on what is wasted during and after construction. In the European Union, 25-30% of all waste produced by humans comes from construction and demolition (EC, 2018).