Research for Better Quality of Urban Life: the Build4People Project

The Build4People project aims to research and promote the use of sustainable buildings and sustainable urbanization through re-configuring the urban transformation pathway of Phnom Penh. Thereby, it focuses on people’s aspirations and their behaviour. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Project Objectives

Our project promotes sustainable buildings and sustainable urban development from a people-centred perspective. We aim at lowered greenhouse gas, pollutant emissions, a better indoor environment, an increase of urban green, a healthier urban climate. Read more.

Project Originality

The trans-disciplinary Build4People project connects scientific-conceptional and analytical aspects. The superior normative bracket is always the urban quality of life. We align people’s needs and aspirations with tools to benefit their living. Read more.

Project Relevance

Cambodia’s traditional architecture took climate conditions into account. Today dynamic economic growth affects the way buildings are built and operated which is not energy-efficient nor tropical climate adapted. Reasons enough for B4P. Read more.

Project Set-up

10 partners across continents join forces to implement 7 work packages: from Behaviour Change, Sustainable Buildings and Neighbourhoods, to Urban Green, Urban Climate to Sustainable Urban Transformation and Coordination. Read more.

Project Approach

The Build4People project considers sustainable, people-centred urban development as a crosscutting task. A genuinely people-centred planning system can neither be expected to “evolve by itself” nor is it feasible through legal regulations only. Our diverse team includes Cambodian and German partners which cooperate on a trans-disciplinary basis. Together they will develop innovative concepts aimed at urban sustainability that are based on scientific and regional expertise. The integrating link of our scientific-conceptional, analytical and normative dimension is the urban quality of life, which we consider to be the general foundation for our people-driven approach. The research consortium will carry out field research together with the most renowned local universities. Based on these insights, context-specific interventions will be implemented together with a number of core actors most important of all the Phnom Penh Capital Hall and the developer company Peng Huoth Group. Locally established multipliers such as the European Chamber of Commerce or the Center for Khmer Studies will support the dissemination of our approaches.

A strong partnership to deliver research results

Academic Quality
We gathered a team with a proven record of academic excellence, extensive regional expertise and solid project experience.

Transdisciplinary Approach
We draw from expertise and methods from Human Geography, Architecture, Urban Planning, Enviromental Psychology, Civil Engineering, Remote Sensing, Geoinformatics and Climate Research.

Cross-border cooperation
German Universities and private sector actors collaborate with Cambodia partners from the academic arena, the municial setting and responsible ministrial offices.

Latest News

Stay up-to-date with our latest activities

Build4People enters innovative alliance with Overseas Cambodian Investment Corporation (OCIC) to conduct the Build4People Ecocity Transition Lab 2024

The Build4People team is proud to confirm that one of leading property developers of Cambodia, the Overseas Cambodian Investment Corporation (OCIC), has agreed to jointly conduct the Build4People Ecocity Transition Lab (ECTL). As a highly innovative alliance between the private sector, local and international academia and Phnom Penh Capital Hall (PPCH), it will take place in spring 2024.

The selected case study will be Norea City currently being developed by OCIC on 125 ha of reclamation land along Mekong River with a total budget of more than $2.5 billion. The site is located opposite of Diamond Island at Sangkat Nirouth, Khan Chbar Ampov, Phnom Penh.

The Build4People Ecocity Transition Lab (ECTL) is a transformative process-oriented approach involving and integrating multi-stakeholders in a transdisciplinary way. Among others, by means of co-design and a series of planning workshops, Build4People will develop alternative planning visions of urban sustainability away from business as usual. In addition, the ECTL will serve to test our design guidelines and our sustainable neighbourhood planning criteria.

As a final result of the ECTL process, OCIC will get hopefully inspired to create a model case and demonstration project for a cutting-edge sustainable neighborhood development in Cambodia.

OCIC has recently received the prestigious award “Best Developer 2023” at the Property Guru Awards held in Phnom Penh in August 2023.

#build4people #OCIC #NoreaCity #PPCH #BMBF_SUREregions

Representation of Build4People at a conference about gender-sensitive building in development cooperation at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in Berlin

On 22 November 2023, the Build4People got represented during a conference about the topic of “gender-sensitive building in development cooperation” at the seat of the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in Berlin.

Our presentation with the title “a gender-equitable building in Cambodia: Experiences from the Build4People project” had been jointly prepared by the Build4People consortium leader Dr. Michael Waibel (Hamburg University), Dr. Anke Blöbaum (Magdeburg University), leader of the Build4People Work Package “Behaviour Change”, and by Christina Karagianni (Technical School of Applied Sciences, Lübeck), research associate of the Build4People Work Package “Sustainable Building”.

Due to the sick leave of Michael, Christina jumped in and presented our findings to a large audience with representatives from municipal governments, civil society networks, academia, and from select donor organisations.

Among others, we explained that our transformative events have already empowered women in Cambodian’s construction sector to organise their own community (W.A.E.) and that the Build4People team will actively support this, in the future.

Moreover, we presented arguments from our survey pointing towards the direction of a design that allows more flexibility in the use of rooms in order to include Cambodian women’s needs more systematically and explicitly in the planning, something that Mrs. Eva Kail , an expert for gender-equitable building and planning from the city of Wien, also presented during her keynote speech.

From a scientific viewpoint, we pointed out the need of research on gender-related behaviour constraints instead of a simple dichotomous view on gender-differences.

Concluding, we have to say that the gender analysis in the context of presentation preparation raised our gender-based awareness, particularly in the context of upcoming project activities and that our team is very open to receive proposals to foster gender mainstreaming in Cambodia’s construction sector, e.g. in regard of B4P implementation phase (2025-2027).

Last but not least, the Build4People team would like to particularly thank Ms. Esther Moltie from the Policy Advice Sector Programme „Cities“ of the “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit“ (GIZ). Esther invited us to become part of this exciting event and who was always very helpful, professional and swift in her communication with us.

Build4People Urban Quality of Life Workshop, Eberswalde University of Sustainable Development

From 09-10 November 2023, the annual meeting of the German Build4People team took place at Eberswalde University of Sustainable Development (HNEE), the seat of the BuildPeople Work Package “Urban Green Infrastructures” led by Prof. Dr. Jan-Peter Mund.

Paper of Build4People Work Package #4 accepted for Presentation and Publication at the 5th International Conference on Remote Sensing

We are happy to announce that the paper “Spatiotemporal Analysis of Land Surface Temperature in Response to Land Use and Land Cover Changes: A Remote Sensing Approach” has been accepted for presentation and publication at the 5th International Electronic Conference on Remote Sensing.

The paper has been written by Gulam Mohiuddin, as corresponding author, and by Jan-Peter Mund, both from Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Germany. Mohi and Jan are members of the Build4People Work Package #4 “Urban Green Infrastructures”.

Link to the paper, poster and presentation: https://sciforum.net/paper/view/15836

DOI-Link of the paper: https://doi.org/10.3390/ECRS2023-15836