The built environment is where planetary challenges become tangible. The materials we extract, the energy we consume, and the buildings we construct all shape our relationship with the Earth’s finite resources. Yet moving towards a more sustainable built environment requires more than new technologies or ambitious targets. It requires these solutions to become part of how buildings are designed, specified, financed, and built.
At Cabanon 2050, where zero-emission design, circular materials, and energy autonomy come together within just 15 m², these possibilities take a tangible form. But how can the principles embodied in this small-scale demonstration translate into projects across China’s vast and rapidly evolving built environment? What stands between planetary ambitions and standard building practice?
Co-organised by SwissCham China and Swissnex in China, the Swiss Building Tech Round Table brings together nine Swiss companies active in China’s built-environment sector for a focused peer exchange on the realities of bringing sustainable building technologies to market. Within the broader context of the Planetary Embassy, the conversation asks how industry can help bridge the gap between imagining more regenerative ways of living and making them possible at scale.
Three companies (IQAir, Shine, and Sika BFM) will share their perspectives, followed by a moderated round table open to all participating companies. Together, participants will explore the barriers that prevent promising solutions from becoming standard practice: higher upfront costs, lengthy specification processes, competing priorities, and the challenge of communicating long-term value to clients.
When does the conversation around sustainable building technologies gain traction, and when does it fall apart? Who has the responsibility and influence to move solutions forward? And what would it take to make planetary considerations not an exception to conventional construction, but a fundamental part of how we build?
By bringing market experience into dialogue with the wider ambitions of the Planetary Embassy, this exchange seeks to move beyond the question of what technologies can do towards what it takes to put them into practice.
Program
Moderation: Vittoria Pesenti, Executive Director, SwissCham Shanghai
09:30 – Registration
10:00 – Welcome
10:05 – IQAir presentation – Crystal Han, VP Sales and Marketing, IQAir China
10:12 – Shine presentation – Sophia Slingerland, Founder & GM, Shine | National Representative, Vice-President, SwissCham Shanghai
10:19 – Sika BFM presentation – TBD
10:26 – Moderated round table – all participants
11:20 – Wrap-up & next steps
11:30 – End
