There has not been a year in our recent history which has shaken and challenged us as a community in the overall social environment as 2022 We are experiencing a war in Europe which has created endless suffering for the people in Ukraine and whose consequences are also of considerable concern to us We all share responsibility for dealing with the escalation of the global energy and climate crisis and our profession invariably has a very special role to play here A turning point is unavoidable especially in the field of architecture not least because the building industry is responsible for more than half of the climate damaging emissions Hospitals are among the biggest consumers of resources and energy both in the construction phase and in their subsequent operation As specialists in healthcare buildings we have impressively documented our long established awareness of climate friendly construction with the handover in 2022 of the world s first passive house clinic in Frankfurt Höchst We will continue to pursue and advance the path to sustainable architecture in all our efforts Since building for the most sensitive group in our society the sick and the weak entails extremely high demands especially in fire protection and building physics we will not immediately succeed in avoiding the use of high emission building materials such as reinforced concrete and cement However an important option here apart from the desirable savings is to stretch the required budgets for grey energy over a much longer period of time In the past new construction was considered to be almost without alternative in the health care sector due to functional advantages We believe however that in the future we will have to promote the conversion and upgrading of existing buildings much more strongly than before Of course not every outdated hospital building will be suitable for meeting the functional and medical technical requirements But when we rebuild we also have to rethink our buildings question our demands in creative dialogue with our clients find the right balance and seek forward looking solutions with our partners from the engineering sector Our buildings should be able to withstand all kinds of transformations far into the future and be of high quality robust and extremely flexible Later refurbishments of existing buildings should already be planned today including the option of additional storeys for example in order to avoid the sealing of new areas and to keep the urban footprint low

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