The international building challenge: a unique example of collaboration between European universities

Abstract

The built environment is diverse in Europe. The establishment of a research group on “innovative real estate management” in 2010 marked the start of development of study programmes on the built environment at several universities in the Netherlands. The idea was to draft a game programme for students to compete for developing the best real estate design. Soon IBC became an international student exchange programme, allowing multidisciplinary student groups from different European cities to make the best propositions for a real estate case.
 In the years to follow, more international participants joined the programme to add diversity and multidisciplinarity to the IBC project. It is a serious cross-cultural undertaking in which different experiences, approaches, visions, creativity, innovativeness, languages and personal skills interact for a very short period of time.
 These requirements illustrate the complexity of the task that needs high professionalism, cross-cultural and crossfunctional approaches to achieve the best results in a dynamically changing real estate industry facing new challenges and longing for new education strategies. Despite the COVID-19 travel restrictions, students are still provided with a broad selection of interesting practical cases and an opportunity to cooperate with their foreign colleagues online.
 Today the following respected education institutions participate in the IBC project: University of Applied Sciences Saxion (Netherlands), RANEPA (Russia), MGSU (Russia), Moscow Architectural Institute (Russia), Vives University College (Belgium), University of Duisburg (Germany), Westminster University ( England).