6x A sustainable home

1. The façade of your house as water storage and cooling

How nice would it be if your house could absorb the excess rain to provide cooling when it’s warm out? Studio Tjeerd Veenhoven designed a 3D-printed brick for façade panels. The hollow stone collects the water, and when that water evaporates, the stone acts as a cooling device.

Tjeerd van Veenhoven developed the stone as part of the What if Lab Sweco project Totally Local. The lab challenges designers to design applications for a self-sufficient city.

This project by Tjeerd Veenhoven can be seen and felt at the What if Lab, Klokgebouw, in Hall 2.

2. Make your home beautiful with waste

Want to make something beautiful and useful from discarded building materials? Architect Peter van Assche (Bureau SLA) and designers Reinder Bakker and Hester van Dijk (Overtreders W) developed façade tiles from old plastic frames, downpipes and rain gutters. 

To prove that recycled plastic sells, the architect and designers designed and built their own factory: the Pretty Plastic Plant. In 2017 Pretty Plastic Pretty Plastic produced 9,000 tiles for The Peoples Pavilion, which was shown during Dutch Design Week. The tiles have been certified since 2019. This means that the tiles can now be applied to any building.

3. Living in a house made of recycled plastic

Plastic is abundant. SaveCabin (a collaboration between SuperCabin and Save Plastics) sees it as a valuable resource with endless solutions. The last bits of plastic waste, which often end up in the oven, are now used to build a tiny house. A tiny house with hooks on the roof and equipped with every luxury and comfort.

Want to experience the luxury and comfort for yourself? The SaveCabin is on show in the Embassy of Rethinking Plastics exhibition at Yksi Expo.

4. Building on biodiversity

A stool and façade covering in which insects can also build their nests. Two objects that were pulled from Omlab‘s sleeve. Omlab developed an environmentally friendly, cement-free material from sewage and drinking water purification. Super light and with the strength of gypsum concrete. That material can be 3D printed. Omlab shows that 3D printing can be done circularly.

Together with designer Lilian van Daal, Omlab designed a stool by Stroncq. The prototype of a biobased slope tile, forms the stool’s seat. You can also put the stool outside so all kinds of insects can make a home in it. Omlab also developed Modular by nature: biodegradable façade coverings for insects, birds and other city residents.

Stroncq and Modular by Nature are part of the Embassy of Rethinking Plastic at Yksi Expo. 

You may recognise Omlab from last year. Omlab’s Restroom Number Two was featured during the Embassy of Circular & Biobased Building’s ‘The Exploded View – Beyond Building.’

5. A sustainable building blocks library

The CO2 footprint of the use of materials in construction is enormous. Contractor Hurks and maintenance and renovation company Casper de Haan developed the Da Vinci Green housing concept. With this, the two companies aim for a fifty percent CO2 reduction compared to the current standard home. 

With Da Vinci Green, you can compose a house from the building blocks library, in which you can choose from biobased, recycled and reusable materials. In doing so, the library provides an overview of the costs and the long-term environmental impact.

Would you like to know more about this sustainable building block library? You can find Da Vinci Green in the exhibition “Ode aan de durvers” [An ode to those who dare] of the Embassy of Circular & Biobased Building on Trudotorenplein on Strijp-S.

6. Straw as a full-fledged building material

A timber frame construction made mainly of straw? Strotec shows that it is possible with the EcoCocon façade panels. These panels consist of 10 percent wood – from renewable FSC forests – and 89 percent of straw – a by-product of agriculture. This makes the product almost completely cradle-to-cradle. A biobased product that stores CO2 and makes the home’s climate comfortable due to the high insulation.

Strotec’s straw panels can be seen in the “Ode aan de durvers” exhibition of the Embassy of Circular & Biobased Building on Trudotorenplein on Strijp-S.