That was REBUILD 2025...

REBUILD 2025 closed its doors last Friday, April 25, consolidating industrialized construction as the new economic engine of the country in which business opportunities and social improvement are arising. Therefore, a total of 28,739 building professionals gathered at the event from Wednesday to Friday, in order to discover everything that industrialization of the sector entails and to learn first-hand about the new developments that have emerged in the market in recent months.

In this sense, those in charge of presenting the industrialized, sustainable and technological innovations have been the 634 exhibiting firms that have been cited in REBUILD. Altogether, they have unveiled more than 2,400 solutions for interiors, kitchens and bathrooms, and in categories such as lighting, enclosures, floors and surfaces, facades, energy efficiency, air conditioning, home automation, digital solutions and BIM or industrialized building systems in 2D or 3D, among others.

Within the framework of REBUILD 2025, the Advanced Architecture and Construction 4.0 Congress took place, which brought together 707 experts from all over the world, who have directed the future of construction towards a more industrialized, circular, digitized sector, adapted to the environment and which strives for the wellbeing of users. In this sense, the main conclusion has been the evolution towards industrialization, which stands as a response to the current challenges of the lack of affordable housing, the high environmental impact, or the lack of talent.

REBUILD as a meeting point for the world’s construction leaders

The challenges of the new construction model
Industrialization as a way to solve the current social, climatic and sector challenges has been, in the same way, the backbone of the Congress of Advanced Architecture and Construction 4.0, the reference forum of the industry that takes place in the context of REBUILD. Its auditoriums have brought together leaders such as Manel Rodriguez, Partner and CEO of Grupo Salas, who has stressed the potential of the off-site model to modernize the residential offer, stating that “what makes us talk about industrialization today is the need, since there is no other possible way to update the building stock.”

For his part, Jose Manuel Villanueva, Co-CEO of 011h, pointed out that “the challenge is to industrialize without standardizing aesthetically, and for that we need digitalization”. Continuing along these lines, Miguel Ángel Santos, Residential Business Director at Molins, explained that “prefabrication is not industrialization. Industrialization is a solution that goes hand in hand with digitalization, all the agents involved have REBUILD is an event of: to be able to work at the same time on a project and this requires standardization to provide the developer and end customer with a solution that satisfies them.”

REBUILD 2025 also hosted a summit of high-level representatives from a dozen Autonomous Communities, who used the event to highlight the possibilities of cooperation between the administration and the private sector. In the case of Octavio López, Councilor for Development, Housing, Logistics and Territorial Cohesion of the Government of Aragón, he stated that “in Aragón there are 47,000 young people who cannot be emancipated, therefore, it is not a time for analysis, but for managers to face this problem now. In our Community we are being a reference in the implementation of the public housing stock, for example, we have developed a specific plan for small municipalities. But without public-private collaboration this process could not be addressed”.

Begoña Alfaro, Third Vice-President and Councilor for Housing, Youth and Migration Policies of the Government of Navarra, named European Innovative Region 2025, stated that “the challenge ahead of us is not linked to a housing problem, but to affordability; we have to expand the stock of decent and affordable housing. For example, we have approved the declaration of a stressed market area in 21 municipalities (which will affect 70% of the population of Navarre), which will help to curb the escalation of prices”.

REBUILD as a meeting point for world leaders in the construction industry
The knowledge hub that REBUILD has become has been the scenario chosen by the great swords of the building industry to share their point of view on the future of the sector. One of them was Dominique Perrault, who designed the Olympic Village for the Paris 2024 Games, who confirmed during his visit to the fair that “we are working on the extension of the Magic Box in Madrid to adapt it to the new urban context. In addition, it will be a fully industrialized project, in fact, we are going to embellish it with industrialization”.

Likewise, Stefano Boeri, known for his green architecture projects such as the Bosco Verticale in Milan, assured the meeting that “architecture must make an effort to integrate nature, not to dominate it. The Bosco Verticale is a way to connect people with trees, clean air and landscape, in the heart of a city”.

Carlo Ratti, architect and curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia -who signed the manifesto defining architecture in the current era of climate change at REBUILD 2025 with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez– also gave one of the most eagerly awaited presentations. In it, he spoke of the relevance of technology in his projects, for example, in his next initiative in the Duomo in Milan, where a garden representing the four seasons will be set up with a microclimate that will change with each season. A proposal that responds to his commitment to “mitigate the warming of cities, a problem that Madrid also suffers in summer, as well as other cities in Italy, and we do it with the introduction of trees”. Ratti has reiterated his goal in “using nature to protect against the weather and extreme phenomena such as the DANA in Valencia. At the next Biennale we will analyze this aspect with all the intelligence available from the different disciplines involved, where 280 projects will be exhibited by more than 750 participants,” he added.