Ahead of COP26, the UK Green Building Council has shared details of Build Better Now, a virtual reality pavilion featuring 17 exemplary sustainable building projects.

The online exhibition which launches later this month, will demonstrate opportunities for tackling the climate emergency while limiting the impact of our built environment as we move towards Net Zero. The project was delivered thanks to Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE) member AECOM’s VR technology and both ACE and sister organisation the Environmental Industries Commission (EIC) are among the 100 industry partners.

Climate change has never been higher on the global public agenda and Build Better Now has been curated to help give the sector an even stronger voice at COP26.

The selected projects are making an immediate positive impact on the planet and people’s lives and are both scalable and replicable – potentially delivering far-reaching impacts. Themes covered include natural resource use, climate mitigation and adaptation and nature and biodiversity. View the online exhibition from 31 October, here.

Pioneering projects include a cultural centre in Sweden that will be one of the world’s tallest timber buildings; the largest Certified Passivhaus building in the Southern hemisphere in Australia; a 100-hectare innovation district in Italy digitally mapped and powered by 100% renewable energy sources; and the largest new build energy-positive office building in Norway, which supplies surplus renewable energy to neighbouring buildings as well as powering electric buses.

Buildings constructed using natural local materials range from a UK university building utilising thatch and reed; a school in Indonesia built with bamboo and the first 3D-printed sustainable homes made entirely from raw clay – perfectly balancing ultra-modern construction techniques with historic, traditional materials.

Projects protecting and enhancing nature include a government-led eco-tourism initiative to restore a national park in Rwanda and a high-tech rewilding project, restoring native forest and peatlands and reintroducing locally extinct species to 100 acres of land in the Scottish Highlands, which will form a template for similar nature regeneration globally.

As well as government-funded research into retrofitting Scotland’s iconic but hard-to-heat tenement homes, the exhibition features a favela in Brazil and affordable sustainable housing solutions in the UK, New Zealand and Pakistan. Also included are an adaptable cross laminated timber bridge concept designed for a circular economy, as well as an initiative to develop a sustainable mass timber building market building in East Africa.

Alongside the 17 sustainable building projects, a full programme of events has been curated in the run-up to the built environment day at COP26. These virtual events wil feature built environment experts from around the globe and are free and open to all – more details in our event pages.

Explore all of our online COP26 related content. Once logged in, members can download our exclusive briefing below.