On 4-5 October 2023, the AIVC – TightVent – venticool 2023 joint Conference “Ventilation, IEQ, and Health in Sustainable Buildings”, was organised by the International Network on Ventilation and Energy Performance (INIVE) on behalf of the Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre (AIVC), the Building and Ductwork Airtightness Platform (TightVent Europe), the international platform for ventilative cooling (venticool), and Aalborg University. It was a successful event, which drew just over 200 participants – researchers, engineers & architects, policy makers or regulatory bodies, manufacturers & stakeholders and international organisations from 33 countries.

The conference programme featured three parallel tracks of structured sessions, with around 150 presentations that exploring the main conference themes: Smart Ventilation, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and Health, Building & Ductwork Airtightness, and Ventilative Cooling – Resilient Cooling. A special session known as: “90 seconds industry presentations” was specifically organised for the event’s sponsors.

Furthermore, the conference served as a major discussion place for ongoing projects, such as the IEA EBC Annex 78 “Supplementing Ventilation with Gas-phase Air Cleaning, Implementation, and Energy Implications”, the IEA EBC Annex 80 “Resilient Cooling of Buildings”, the IEA EBC Annex 86 “Energy Efficient IAQ Management in Residential Buildings” and the IEA EBC Annex 87 “Energy and Indoor Environmental Quality Performance of Personalized Environmental Control Systems”.

In this article, we present the key trends, ideas, considerations, and conclusions that emerged during the two days of the conference, with a primary focus on the topic of building and ductwork airtightness.