Zakary Werdegar
Design Portfolio.
💡Design
🎨 Art
🙋 About me
Zakary Werdegar 2025
I wrote this paper as a project while working in the Innovation Department of Goldbeck, one of Europe’s largest industrial construction companies with an annual revenue of 5 billion dollars.
Research Report, Goldbeck GmbH
2023
In this report, I look at the two largest climate risks facing Germany’s construction sector as determined by the German Federal Government in their “Second Progress Report on the German Strategy for Adaption to Climate Change (DAS).” These risks pertain to the rising magnitude, frequency, and longevity of temperature and rain: heat and water. I aim to cover the pros and cons of nearly every solution and mitigation strategy discussed online that can be reasonably implemented in a commercial construction project. This means I have excluded solutions like building river defenses to protect from flooding, as these are beyond the scope of a Goldbeck project. In covering these topics, I have relied on published research to convey their uses and the degree to which they are helpful. Many of these solutions you may have already heard of. In fact, most of them are discussed and revered in newspapers, magazines, and other media. But as I’ve learned through this research, they are often misrepresented as silver bullets to climate problems. Some only work in specific circumstances, and others can even worsen climate change if used in improper conditions. A distillation of the findings is provided at the end of each chapter in sections labeled “Recommendations.” Also included are strategies for communicating to customers how Goldbeck buildings are prepared for the climate risks ahead. I hope this report serves to educate, inform, and perhaps inspire action in combatting the greatest threat our species has faced.”
Read the full report here.