Reverse local construction supply chains for the beautiful re-assembly of reclaimed construction products

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Code: 37003 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-BUSINESS-03 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

The move towards increased renovation and the greater reuse of construction products in the built environment has created a growing interest in new business models and approaches centred on modularity, adaptability, disassembly, and sufficiency. Whereas significant research and practice has focused on the disassembly, collection, sorting, and re-processing of construction products, less attention has been directed so far to their later re-assembly.

The re-assembly stage is key for the re-integration of increasing quantities of reclaimed construction products into new applications. Concurrently, the endeavour to transform the built environment along the New European Bauhaus values of sustainability, inclusion, and beauty creates opportunities to re-think how to re-assemble reclaimed construction products safely and creatively in ways that increase the aesthetic and cultural value of buildings and infrastructures, enhancing inhabitants’ well-being and living conditions.

The re-assembly of safe and sustainable reclaimed construction products requires solid knowledge of their historical uses and characteristics as well as traceability of their condition and displacement. Digital tools and technologies such as Digital Product Passports and reverse construction supply chains, following the circular economy’s cascading principle for bio-based materials and 10R-Strategies (refuse, reduce, resell/reuse, repair, refurbish, remanufacture, repurpose, recycle, recover, re-mine) for non-biobased materials, are key for the effective management, movement and reuse of safe reclaimed construction products.

Local reverse construction supply chains that re-circulate safe construction products as locally as possible have the potential to maximise economic value and resource utilisation, reduce waste, pollution, energy use, procurement costs, and the environmental footprint of construction and renovation activities, and foster creativity and innovation towards greater circularity and the regeneration of social and cultural meanings in the built environment.

Bottom-up social entrepreneurship for the co-creation of neighbourhoods in line with the New European Bauhaus

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Code: 37001 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-BUSINESS-02 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

Bottom-up social entrepreneurship can act as a key driver of sustainable and inclusive neighbourhood co-creation in line with the values of the New European Bauhaus. Bottom-up social entrepreneurship leverages local expertise to tackle local social and environmental challenges. It can generate local economic value, create new and inclusive employment opportunities, leverage cultural and creative industries, and address the segregation of different community and civil society groups, including marginalised and vulnerable inhabitants.

Research is required on the various aspects of using bottom-up social entrepreneurship for the co-creation of neighbourhoods.

Renovating the built environment through design for adaptability and disassembly

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Code: 36998 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-BUSINESS-01 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

Design for adaptability and disassembly is a concept for the design of buildings, common spaces, and infrastructures integrating circular economy principles for greater economic, environmental and social sustainability. It presents significant potential for the renovation of the built environment by allowing for easy adaptation of spaces and structures to changing needs and uses or technological advancements.

Renovating with modular components and elements that can be dis- and re-assembled and thereby repurposed across different applications further supports the long-term use, adaptation, and repurposing of buildings, common spaces, and infrastructures. This maximises their economic value (by retaining the embedded value of construction materials, components, and elements), improves their environmental performance (by reducing waste and the extraction of new raw materials and resources), and avoids their demolition as well as the construction of new structures.

The application of design for adaptability and disassembly has focused on new constructions. However, most structures and spaces in urban, peri-urban and rural areas have already been built and require adaptation and repurposing for new and updated uses and functions. Therefore, research should address design for adaptability and disassembly for the renovation of existing buildings, common spaces, and infrastructures.

Innovative approaches for sustainable, inclusive and beautiful social and affordable housing

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Code: 36995 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-REGEN-04 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

An increasing number of new building technologies and construction methods became available on the market in recent years that can make construction and renovation more sustainable. Current policies and regulations set ambitious standards (e.g., in terms of energy efficiency and carbon footprint), which come with higher initial investment costs, making the provision of sustainable, high-quality social and affordable housing in many European neighbourhoods a challenge.

Innovative approaches are necessary to make the best use of available building technologies and construction methods to improve climate adaptability and resilience and reduce energy consumption, carbon emissions and resource use in social and affordable housing while delivering housing that is affordable, inclusive and improves well-being, in line with the European Commission’s Affordable Housing Initiative.

Sufficiency measures in the built environment

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Code: 36993 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-REGEN-03 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

Sufficiency is a set of policy measures and practices which reduce the demand for energy, materials, land, water, and other natural resources, while delivering well-being for all within planetary boundaries. It represents an integrated approach to sustainability and circularity, acknowledging and balancing the interplay of decarbonisation and equity.

In the built environment, floor space is considered as a resource. Sufficiency measures seek to optimise the use of existing (vacant and under-utilised) spaces, buildings, and infrastructures. These measures lead to an absolute reduction in demand for new-built floor space, reducing resource consumption, embodied and operational carbon emissions, and other environmental impacts in the built environment. By alleviating strain on land resources, sufficiency measures can help address social issues, such as housing shortages, and reduce infrastructure costs for municipalities.

The potential of sufficiency measures in the built environment is yet under-explored due to data constraints, limited understanding of their impacts, and insufficient knowledge exchange.

Bio-fabricated materials for sustainable and beautiful construction

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Code: 36991 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-REGEN-02 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

Along with the current paradigm shift towards a sustainable and circular bioeconomy and the use of circular design principles in the built environment, new materials and innovative technologies are emerging to help reach zero-waste goals and the lowest environmental impact. Bio-fabricated materials open new avenues for reaching higher ambitions in terms of sustainability, especially if associated with high-technological solutions that can accelerate and simplify their manufacturing, retrofitting and renewal.

Bio-fabricated materials and their potential as an alternative to conventional materials are still underexplored. The widespread integration of bio-fabricated materials in the built environment^[1] faces several barriers, from technical and regulatory hurdles to high production costs, limited knowledge and expertise among construction professionals, and low acceptance by the construction ecosystem. Bio-fabricated materials and their potential as an alternative to conventional materials are underexplored.

Research is required to investigate new ways to address the main technical challenges of bio-fabricated materials.

Applying regenerative design to the built environment in neighbourhoods

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Code: 36989 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-REGEN-01 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

Regenerative design aims to actively restore, revitalise and enhance ecosystems, contributing to both human and planetary health, in line also with the ‘One Health’ approach. Regenerative design thus contributes to creating sustainable, thriving environments for local communities and ecosystems. This involves principles such as circularity, waste reduction, resource and energy efficiency, promoting biodiversity, and the use of carbon-storing materials.

Regenerative design offers pathways to develop construction and renovation methods and designs that go beyond conventional approaches. However, the potential and application of regenerative design in the built environment is still under-explored due to the novelty of the solutions, the complexity of inter-related factors, the limited understanding of their impacts, and insufficient knowledge exchange and technology transfer.

Network of neighbourhoods for innovative policies on gentrification

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Code: 36986 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-PARTICIPATION-04 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

Strategies and interventions to regenerate neighbourhoods may lead to gentrification, a process that can bring revitalization, sustainable economic growth, diversity and integration but also segregation, insecurity, exclusion, displacement, loss of cultural identity, and socio-economic inequality. Mitigating the negative consequences of gentrification cannot be achieved without policy innovation.

This topic supports informal networking among neighbourhoods to exchange knowledge and experiences, build their capacity, facilitate innovation in policymaking to mitigate the negative consequences of gentrification – including green gentrification – that may result from interventions aligned with the New European Bauhaus.

Beautiful, sustainable and inclusive street furniture for the transformation of neighbourhoods

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Code: 36982 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-PARTICIPATION-03 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

Infrastructural decay, unequal access to essential public amenities (e.g., seating elements, facilities for people with disabilities such as ramps and lifts, etc.) and safety concerns (e.g., related to insufficient lighting or hazardous spatial conditions) represent just some of the challenges that especially older and poorer European neighbourhoods face.

The design of street furniture in neighbourhoods can have a positive impact on people’s lives by enhancing comfort, safety, well-being, health, and accessibility. It can also foster social interaction, cohesion, a sense of belonging, cultural identity and community, respect for common spaces, etc.

Furthermore, the attention to aesthetic values in the design of street furniture can contribute to local economies by attracting new visitors (e.g. developing creative tourism) and supporting local businesses, cultural and creative sectors and industries, and social economy entities and enterprises.

More prototyping and demonstration are essential to speed up the integration of innovative street furniture, that offer more attractive, sustainable, and inclusive design solutions for common spaces, following the values and principles of the New European Bauhaus.

Fostering and maintaining the social fabric for the green transition in neighbourhoods

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Code: 36979 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-PARTICIPATION-02 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

Social connections and cultural participation are core features of individual well-being. Evidence shows a strong association between participation in cultural activities and civic behaviour (such as voting and volunteering), empathy, tolerance, security and social cohesion. Conversely, low interpersonal trust, heightened risk-taking, and disengaged civic attitudes are correlated with an increased sense of loneliness – the lack of meaningful social interactions. Cultural organisations and artistic practices with a social purpose or dimension can help to better connect people, strengthen social fabric, and overcome social boundaries.

This topic aims to study the interplay between cultural participation, social connections and civic engagement. The resulting insights can be used to foster and maintain the social fabric of neighbourhoods and support their green transition while addressing other challenges such as the decline in social connections.

The impact of common space on neighbourhood communities

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Code: 36976 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-NEB-2025-01-PARTICIPATION-01 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: New European Bauhaus | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 12/11/2025

One of the core NEB values is inclusion. The regeneration of common spaces can facilitate inclusiveness and social interaction in neighbourhoods by providing a safe, accessible, and attractive environment. Attractive, well-designed, well-maintained, and secure common spaces can bring people together for commercial, cultural, and leisure activities. A safe environment can also create a sense of trust and community among inhabitants. Recognising a neighbourhood’s diversity “not only improves social and spatial cohesion but also contributes to democratic, peaceful coexistence”. Social, economic, and cultural services and amenities that reflect this diversity and allow for people to come together and interact, can have a particular impact on inclusion and can lead to new forms of collaboration, solidarity and social recognition.

Better knowledge of how common spaces affect social relations is required to scale up successful common space initiatives across Europe. This topic seeks to produce insights on the impacts of common spaces (new, redesigned or redeveloped) on neighbourhoods and their communities

Effective environmental observing systems and associated governance

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Code: 36974 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-CL6-2025-03-GOVERNANCE-08 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment (Cluster 6)(2021-2027) | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 24/09/2025

The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of observation systems will play a critical role in global initiatives such as WMO’s Global Monitoring of Greenhouse Gases or the GEO initiatives and flagship initiatives, which are essential to support EU and international policies, such as the Paris Agreement, the Montreal Protocol and the Kigali Agreement, the European Climate Law, the EU Climate Adaptation Strategy, the EU Climate Change Regulation, the EU Climate Action Plan and the EU Climate Action Plan.

The ocean-climate-biodiversity nexus and marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR)

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Code: 36971 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-CLIMATE-01 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment (Cluster 6)(2021-2027) | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 16/09/2025

Removing carbon dioxide (CDR) in an environmentally safe, socially acceptable and economically sustainable way is essential for the implementation of European and global climate policies.

There is considerable uncertainty regarding scalability and short, medium and long-term effectiveness and impacts on marine ecosystems and human health.

Monitoring, reporting, verification and mitigation of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions and related air pollutants from agriculture

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Code: 36967 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-CLIMATE-04 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment (Cluster 6)(2021-2027) | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 16/09/2025

Most of the emissions can be attributed to methane and nitrous oxide, which come from livestock production and release from agricultural soils, in particular due to fertiliser use and manure management.

Additional efforts in this area are needed to achieve the EU’s climate objectives, in particular climate neutrality by 2050.

Developing innovative phytosanitary measures for plant health – focus on systems approach for pest risk management

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Code: 36963 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-05 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment (Cluster 6)(2021-2027) | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 25/09/2025

Plant health is vital for agriculture, forestry, ecosystems and biodiversity on a global scale.

However, maintaining healthy crops is becoming increasingly difficult due to climate change, biodiversity loss, globalisation and international trade, which accelerate the spread of pests and diseases. 

Overcoming the barriers for scaling up circular water management in agriculture

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Code: 36959 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-03 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment (Cluster 6)(2021-2027) | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 16/09/2025

According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), water scarcity affects 30% of the EU population, with economic losses of up to €9 billion per year.

Droughts are increasing in frequency, magnitude and impact, and the affected area is expanding. Agriculture is the main water user in some Member States and associated countries.

Additional activities for the European partnership on animal health and welfare

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Code: 36957 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-02 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment (Cluster 6)(2021-2027) | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 16/09/2025

The objective of this action is to continue to support the European Partnership for Animal Health and Welfare identified in the strategic plan “Horizon Europe” 2021-2024 and implemented for the first time under HORIZON-CL6-2023-FARM2FORK-01-2: European Partnership for Animal Health and Welfare, and in particular to fund additional activities.

Strengthening the EU crop breeding research and innovation ecosystem for competitive, resilient, and sustainable agriculture

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Code: 36954 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-09 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment (Cluster 6)(2021-2027) | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 16/09/2025

Crop production is facing increasing challenges, such as the urgent need to adapt to climate change, improve water and nutrient use efficiency , protect biodiversity, improve soil health, reduce environmental impacts and ensure food security and resilience.

Addressing these complex issues requires innovative solutions and the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources to develop resilient and adaptable crops.

Exploring the potential of controlled environment agriculture (CEA)

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Code: 36951 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-08 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment (Cluster 6)(2021-2027) | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 16/09/2025

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) refers to any form of agriculture that controls and optimises environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, light or nutrient concentration.

Examples of CEA include greenhouses, vertical farms, greenhouses, building-integrated agriculture, hydroponics, hydroponics, aeroponics, and other practices where technological advances allow for precise regulation of growing conditions.

CEA optimisation offers advantages in terms of resource efficiency, environmental sustainability and crop quality, providing a promising alternative to traditional agriculture to meet the growing global demand for food, especially in the face of climate change and urbanisation.

Additional activities for the European partnership on accelerating farming systems transition – agroecology living labs and research infrastructures

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Code: 36947 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-01 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment (Cluster 6)(2021-2027) | Start submission calls: 06/05/2025 | End submission calls: 16/09/2025

The objective of this action is to continue to provide support to the European Partnership for Accelerating the Transition of Agricultural Systems – Agroecology Living Labs and Research Infrastructures identified in the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2021-2024.