Most humans of today are born, live their lives, work and die in buildings. Buildings constitute important ingredients in our lives! We want our buildings to give comfortable and healthy indoor environments, protected from outdoor climate variations. We also want our buildings to be efficient, durable and of course economical with regard to investment and operation/maintenance costs. Increasing focus on sustainability results in requirements regarding materials and energy use in buildings. Well-performing buildings is an important part of society’s infrastructure. The society continues to place stricter requirements onto the building industry to secure that both societal and individual aspects are being served. A modern building is a complicated, composite product. A variety of different ingredients must co-operate in order to fulfil several, sometimes conflicting, performance and durability requirements. We have, long ago, passed the stage when the “trial and error” method was sufficient as a basis for development of design, choice of materials and construction. Fundamental and theoretical knowledge of the relevant physical processes, based on scientific research, is now the point of departure for design and construction of the buildings of today. Building Physics (Building Science in North America) is the body of knowledge that underpins most of the building engineering applications and provides design tools for achieving adequate building performance. The International Association of Building Physics (IABP) was established in 2000 to further advance this body of knowledge. One of the venues to promote dialogue and disseminate knowledge in Building Physics/Science is its international conference, held every three years. The first four conferences were held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands (2000), in Leuven, Belgium (2003), in Montreal, Canada (2006) and in Istanbul, Turkey (2009). The 5th conference will take place in Kyoto, Japan May 28 to 31, 2012, hosted by Kyoto University. The conference will provide a forum for scientists, researchers and practitioners from all over the world to disseminate technical information, new ideas and the latest developments and discuss future direction in the fields of building physics. Moreover, the conference is expected to form a platform through which the developed and the developing countries exchange their knowledge and experiences. More information is available on the conference website at http://rcpt.kyoto-bauc.or.jp/IBPC2012/. The IABP conferences follow a rigorous review process by recognized researchers in the field of Building Physics. Carsten Rode, chairman |
