05 · Networks & Platforms
A European Commission flagship for the skills the timber transition needs — and doesn't yet have.
Roughly 40% of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions come from running buildings, and building them adds another 10-20% on top of that — but there aren't yet enough people who know how to build and renovate in low-carbon, healthy, beautiful ways. The NEBA Alliance was the two-and-a-half-year European Commission project (2024–2026) that laid the foundations for the New European Bauhaus Academy: the training network meant to close that skills gap across Europe's construction sector. Fourteen partner organisations from eleven countries — universities, research institutes, industry associations and public bodies — stood up the Academy's first five regional Hubs, its governance, and its first training infrastructure. IAAC leads the South Hub alongside Regione Liguria and Cesefor, running pilot trainings in industrialized wood construction and biomaterial retrofits from Barcelona. A 2025 open call for cascade grants tested whether the network could grow past its founders: 59 proposals came in from institutions the Alliance had never worked with, and 25 of them joined through the resulting grants — the South Hub alone ran ten new trainings reaching 226 participants across Italy, Turkey, Cyprus and Portugal. By the 1st NEB Academy Conference in Barcelona in February 2026, held within the city's year as UNESCO-UIA World Capital of Architecture, the network had grown to more than 40 partner organisations across 21 countries, with Ukraine beginning to build the Academy's newest Hub that May. As the Alliance's founding manifesto puts it: “Without well-trained, educated, empowered people at the core of the built environment, none of Europe's policies … will ever meet their promise.”
neb.academy → · CORDIS — NEBA Alliance project record → · 1st NEB Academy Conference proceedings (Zenodo) →
