Sometimes it feels like an impasse: the enormous climate challenge on the one hand and the enormous construction task on the other. As the Embassy of Circular & Biobased Building, we take up this challenge. We – designers, entrepreneurs, researchers and policymakers – investigate possible solutions and offer new perspectives in the field of circular and biobased design, construction and living.
Through research, experiment, storytelling, imagination (materialization) and meetings, we work on new perspectives for sustainable (circular and biobased) building and living; a circular living environment. We conduct research into the possibilities of new biobased materials with high design quality and circular construction methods such as detachability and modularity. We also investigate specific themes related to system change:
- Health: From polluted air to breathing homes
- Agriculture: From agriculture to arable land
- Neighborhoods of the future: From paved to living neighbourhoods
- Value: From linear to circular
We include both professionals and the general public in the results of our search. We tell you what we have discovered, but also what we don’t know yet. We show the possibilities and the pain points. And we invite everyone to think and participate. With the aim of redirecting the conversation from “is this possible?” towards “how are we going to do this well together?”. In this way we aim to advance towards a shared and consolidated reappraisal of what is of value.
In 2019 we presented the award-winning The Growing Pavilion. In 2020 we started a groundbreaking living lab; The Exploded View. This lab is a collaboration and ongoing open source research of builders, producers, farmers, scientists, designers, governments, knowledge institutes, storytellers and artists united in The Embassy of Circular & Biobased Building. Together we advocate for serious upscaling and a thorough system change, because you build a whole world if you build biobased.
In 2020 we showed with the installation “The Exploded View Methods & Materials” how we want to radically re-examine the realization of a home. The installation now travels to various locations to inspire people with the existing and future possibilities of sustainable building and living.
In 2021 we went a step further with The Exploded View Beyond Building. This is an iconic expo-installation of a full-size house that consists entirely of biobased materials, circular methods and stories about the changing value chain of which it is part. This life-size biobased house stimulates all your senses and shows you the circular future. Next, The Exploded View Beyond Building will be at the Floriade (14 April – 9 October 2022) in Almere.
The Embassy is currently working on the development of the narrative.
