Bao Podcast

Sarah is founder and CEO at Go Forest. Go Forest is a young company, established in 2020 that plants trees all over the world for companies and individuals who want to work towards a greener environment. Go Forest aims to restore nature by planting the right kind of trees in environments where they have positive effects on biodiversity, carbon storage, employment, livelihood, and local economy. Wi...

For our Christmas Special of the Bao Podcast, we welcomed someone very special: Axel van der Donk! Axel is CTO and co-founder at Bao Living. We thought it would be fun to dedicate an episode to what we do here at Bao Living and the learnings of the past 5 years. So I invited my partner in crime Axel to discuss it together.

For episode 17 of the Bao Podcast, we had the honour to welcome Kristof De Jaeger. Kristof is the director of Inhout, a company specialising in timber frame construction. Here they focus on sustainable business using bio-ecological materials. Since 2020, they have also been making modular homes, under the name of Mobble. This is the result of a collaboration with the University of Ghent. These hou...

Özturk Taspinar works at KPMG as Digital Innovation Consultant and is very passionate about entrepreneurship, innovation and anything that’s digital such as AI, Blockchain, robotics et cetera. With the ever-growing PropTech industry that's closing the gap between construction and the digital world, he’s the perfect guest for our Bao Podcast to tell us more about this interesting industry.

For the last episode of this season, our guest is Margaux Lespagnard. Margaux is a PhD researcher at VUB - Vrije Universiteit Brussel - in architectural engineering. In her research, she aims to develop circular design guidance for architects when designing circular affordable housing. She does this under supervision of engineer-architects Niels De Temmerman and Waldo Galle. Her research obviously...

Johan is director of Madaster Belgium. This Dutch company developed a digital materials passport for buildings. This passport is a crucial link to make circular building possible. It’s a digital platform where users can list all the materials that are in a building. This information is enriched, among other things, with product data and commodity prices, and related to regulations and certificatio...

In the 13th episode of the Bao Podcast, we welcome Xavier Leclair. Xavier is founder and CEO of Slow Cabins. This is a Belgian company that allows guests to rent cabins placed in secret locations across the countryside, and has plans to soon expand the concept throughout Belgium and Europe. These Slow Cabins are temporary eco houses that are completely self-sufficient when it comes to water and el...

In episode 12 of the Bao Podcast, we welcome Sven Grooten. Sven is one of the founders of B-architecten. Throughout the years, he started two spin-offs named B-bis and B-city. Today, B-architecten, B-bis, and B-city have grown into a combined office of more than 75 people. Each B-team has its particular focus and way of functioning, yet they all share a distinct innovative view on the variety of p...

For our podcast episode for the month of March, our guest is Jérôme Constant. Jérôme is managing partner at Rise PropTech Fund, a venture capital fund dedicated to Late-Seed and Series A startups active in the PropTech sector. They invest in companies that have the ambition and potential to change the construction & real estate industry in Europe. Recently, they made their first investment in the...

After a short winter break, we’re back with a bang! For our tenth podcast episode, our guest is Jan Kriekels. Jan is the owner of Jaga Climate Designers, a radiator manufacturer using innovative heating and cooling technologies. Jaga employs over 600 people and operates in over 35 countries across the globe. Under his leadership, the company has won a great many international design and export awa...

Hans is the founder and owner of Sustacon. With Sustacon, he advises Flemish family businesses on (among other things) strategy, organizational development, and sustainability. They are specialized in helping companies to work more sustainably in the construction sector, but they also advise companies in other industries. Besides his work at Sustacon, Hans is a part-time professor in Corporate Soc...

Rik is the founder of editorial office Palindroom, specialized in writing articles on construction and architecture. With Palindroom he creates websites where they publish the latest news about the construction industry. One of these websites, architectura.be, is the most visited architecture website in Belgium! Rik also has his own podcast, the ‘Architectura.be Podcast’ where he invites Belgian a...

Jona is Innovation Manager at the well know construction company Groep Van Roey. With 11 companies in this group, They are a specialist in total solutions for the construction industry, they develop projects from start to finish. On top of this they are probably also one of the oldest companies in Belgium: Groep Van Roey was founded in 1760, which makes them 281 years old! For more information, pl...

Chris is the founder of JuuNoo. This company has developed a circular interior wall, it’s a wall that is not demolished at the end of its life but gets dismantled and repositioned as a new wall. Chris started JuuNoo 5 years ago, with one specific goal in mind: to stop building waste created by interior walls. Currently, they are actively conquering the Belgian market, but their ambitions also exte...

Serge is a “climate ambassador” of Al Gore, initiator of the climate case against Belgium (which he and his colleagues have won), and founder & CEO at Futureproofed. The mission of Futureproofed is to help businesses and cities become ‘futureproof’ by helping them reduce their CO2 emissions while saving costs, driving innovation, and becoming more attractive. Two branches of Futureproofed are work...

Sunita is the founder and managing director of SuReal. SuReal is a consultancy firm that supports companies and government agencies in making buildings and city projects more sustainable. To reach this goal, they do all types of studies. One of the projects they already worked on is the Victoria reconversion project in Brussels, which’s been developed by DWNTWN Real Estate & Baltisse. For more inf...

Arne is the co-founder of AMAVI Capital. AMAVI is an independent pan-European investor, established to support the growth of the leading and most promising companies active in the European Proptech industry. AMAVI bridges the gap between the traditional real estate industry on the one hand and the most groundbreaking Proptech scale-ups on the other. For more information, please visit https://amavi...

Bart is the co-founder of Stramien Architects. This is a multidisciplinary design agency focused on architecture, urban development, spatial planning, and the design of public spaces. They have existed for more than than 20 years at this point and have designed some great projects like the Thomas More campus in Mechelen, Ringland, and more recently the railroad park in Borgerhout.

Idriss is the founder of PropTech Lab, a Belgian community for real estate innovators. Since Proptechlab's founding in 2017, already 160 enterprises linked to construction joined PropTech Lab. Of these 160 members, 96 are start-ups and 64 well-established construction companies.

Your host Benjamin speaks in this short introduction about the Bao Podcast and the enterprise behind it: Bao Living.