Friday 28 March 2025
On Thursday 6 March 2025, six Prospective Built4People Innovation Clusters (B4PICs) signed the Built4People (B4P) Innovation Cluster Charter at a special ceremony held at the Nebula project’s final event, ‘Shaping Sustainable Futures’, in Brussels, Belgium.
The six Prospective B4PICs are:
A B4PIC is a group of innovation-driven stakeholders from the built environment that engages in a tailored development and maturation process nurtured by the B4P Partnership and its two Coordination and Support Action (CSA) projects: Nebula and STAR*track.
Via this process, a cluster aims to expand its geographical reach, cross-sector collaboration, and multidisciplinary expertise, ultimately enhancing the sustainability and impact of its members’ innovations.
A growing innovation network
The first members of the B4PIC Network, Build:INN and Odéys (from the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Euskadi Navarra euro-region), signed the charter on 18 September 2023, becoming frontrunner B4PICs and confirming their participation in the network.
Ten further clusters from Portugal, Hungary, Italy, Spain, France, Finland and Belgium signed the charter on Monday 23 September 2024, at the Built4People Stakeholder Forum, totalling 18 clusters now officially recognised as members of the B4PIC Network.
Between them, the clusters’ specialisms are diverse and varied, however, each cluster shares the collective goal of increasing sustainability within the European built environment via innovation and collaboration.
A further expression of interest call for more clusters to apply to join the B4PIC Network will be launched by STAR*track on 1 April 2025.
Built4People, Nebula and STAR*track
The B4P Partnership is a co-programmed public-private partnership within Horizon Europe’s Cluster 5 (climate, energy and mobility). The partnership brings together the European Commission (EC) and two leading associations — the European Construction and sustainable built environment Technology Platform (ECTP) and the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) Europe Regional Network — with a membership base of actors in the built environment.
With €780M (a mix of public and private finance) to fund innovations for the European built environment from 2021–2027, B4P also fosters the establishment of a B4PIC Network, supported by Nebula and STAR*track.
Nebula launched in October 2022 and finishes in March 2025. Building on Nebula’s foundational work, STAR*track runs from May 2024 to April 2027 and aims to further expand and strengthen the B4PIC Network via supportive tools, access to funding opportunities and training on sustainable and inclusive development.
Laura Pallares, Head of Europe, WorldGBC, was present at the cluster signing ceremony and said:
“It was fantastic to witness six more clusters sign the Built4People Innovation Cluster Charter and to officially welcome them into the B4PIC Network.
These clusters will undoubtedly invigorate and strengthen the B4PIC Network via their efforts to increase people-centric sustainable innovation, their cross-collaboration and sharing of new ideas, and their desire to work in alignment with the key principles of the New European Bauhaus; sustainability, beauty and inclusivity for all.
Their collective signing of the charter marks a key step in the Built4People Partnership’s efforts to diversify and strengthen its network and to help catalyse the research and innovation agenda across the European built environment.”
Learn more about the B4PIC Network.
Learn more about Nebula and STAR*track.
ENDS
Pictured above: Members of the new B4PICs at Nebula’s final event.
Notes for editors:
About Nebula
Throughout its duration, Nebula has developed a robust process that guides clusters through three stages of maturity, from ‘Prospective’, to ‘Emerging’ and then finally, ‘Established’. By signing the B4PIC Charter, clusters commit to progressing towards the required level of maturity over a specified timeline.
Once the signed clusters have reached the highest level of defined maturity (by meeting at least two mandatory and one optional ‘success factors’), they will be regarded as an officially ‘Established’ cluster.
