Research programme Housing Quality

Vision

The quality of the housing stock is of major importance to the occupants’ quality of life, to the ecological footprint in urban areas and to -economical assets. This quality has to be maintained and improved considerably in -coming decades to support the increasing demands of occupants, to reduce the ecological burden and to contribute to CO2 reductions. These major challenges require innovative, multidisciplinary scientific research, in which technical engineering approaches are combined with social sciences.

Mission

Our aim is to develop knowledge that will be used to support practices in the building, regeneration and maintenance of housing in the decades to come. Societal demands require a functional and environmental transformation of the current housing stock quality. The Housing Quality (HQ) programme uses multidisciplinary approaches to provide new scientific insights through a combination of four perspectives: technical knowledge of the health and sustainability of dwellings; organisational knowledge for the management of housing providers; knowledge of effective policy -instruments and enforcement procedures and -innovation of building and maintenance processes.

Objectives

The objectives include fundamental contributions to the scientific fields that relate to the improvement of housing quality; contributions to the innovation of the educational curricula; and insights that can be utilised for improving the actual quality of the housing stock. The programme aims to be a frontrunner at national level and to be a key player in specific niches of the international research arena, particularly in the areas of assessment methods for energy efficient housing, building regulations, and strategic management of social landlords.