Project - Knowledge alliance for sustainable mid-rise and tall wooden buildings
KnoWood
Project start November 2018. Project completion October 2021.
KnoWood aims to fulfil the future demands in higher education including entrepreneurial approaches to teaching and learning, innovation, sustainability, transnational, transdisciplinary understanding in sustainable mid-rise and tall wooden buildings, which will increase sustainable growing forestry, employment in the wooden construction industry, a large reduction of greenhouse gasses and will create new innovative sustainable knowledge and courses in academia. The project will promote cooperation and innovation among European and Canadian higher education institutions (HEIs), researchers, business partners, associations, networks and broader society to foster design and construction of mid-rise and tall wooden buildings.
Project objectives
- To strategically research at which level sustainable design, construction and management of sustainable mid-rise and tall wooden buildings is being planned and implemented in the partners’ countries.
- To gather practical experience and knowledge on wooden buildings from business enterprises, associations and networks and to disseminate the information at KnoWood platform.
- To educate key target groups (students, teachers, craftsmen, entrepreneurs) in the field of the sustainability and the emerging global problems in construction.
- To develop and implement the new strategic trans-disciplinary modules/elective elements that meet the needs of the HEIs and market representatives and fulfil the future challenges of sustainable design and construction of mid-rise and tall wooden buildings.
- To improve competencies of students and teachers in problem solving and teamwork, innovative thinking, motivation, awareness of cross-professional project input and project management by using business-oriented project-based learning approach.
- To ensure open awareness of the project results to local, national, EU level and transnational target groups.
The project will directly contribute to achievement of the objectives of the Knowledge Alliances action. The project aims to upgrade the existing study programs with new modules and introduces new, innovative and multidisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning. It stimulates entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial skills of higher education teaching staff and company staff as modules will be jointly developed by academic staff and practitioners; large scale cooperation among HEIs and business sector in terms of knowledge sharing and joint activities will be ensured.
Networking among EU and Canadian academia, business and society as well as development of a KnoWood platform will facilitate the exchange, flow and co-creation of knowledge. The transnational character of the project will also support development of transnational and intercultural competences of the participants.
Project innovative aspects
- Innovative teaching/learning approaches: transdisciplinary, project-based learning, learning by doing, problem solving and critical thinking, use of business-related experiences and real cases in education.
- Innovative know-how inside the companies carried out and tested in real life conditions.
- Unique network for promoting entrepreneurship and innovation in the field of sustainable wooden construction.
KnoWood is implemented by 5 higher education institutions and 6 companies from 4 EU countries and Canada: VIA University College (Denmark), University of Westminster (United Kingdom), Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Lithuania), Universitat Politechnica de Catalunya (Spain), Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (Canada), House Habitat (Spain), Danish Technological Institute (Denmark), Study and Consulting Center (Lithuania), BM TRADA (United Kingdom), State enterprise Center of Registers (Lithuania) and Idea Statika (Lithuania)
The project is funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, project number 600903-EPP-1-2018-1-DK-EPPKA2-KA.
Link