New and existing houses require sustainable (circular) building/renovating in order to prepare for the future. This means: energy efficient, climate adaptive and by applying reusable raw materials.
By 2030, 70% of all electricity and at least 27% of all energy (electricity, gas and heat) will be generated sustainably. The Netherlands made this agreement with all members of the European Union. By 2050, energy supply needs to be almost completely sustainable and CO2 neutral. A transition to a sustainable energy supply is important to stop climate change, which brings up the topic of our existing housing construction and the changes this requires, but also to innovative new construction.
These solutions need to be found by looking at a different way of building, sustainable cooling, bio diversity, modular and circular construction, and bio-based building, such as applying wood or green rooftops. The common practice is to enhance the existing techniques, installations or materials. At The Green Village, a consortium will just start and learn along the way, which offers a lot of room for acceleration. The various parties find common ground in the fact that they’re all willing to dive into the deep end. Here they can test, improve and demonstrate their innovation in an environment exempt of standard rules and regulations. By doing so in an early stage, we can learn lessons faster and scale up to large-scale application.
Renovating our existing building stock and preparing it for the energy transition is one of the biggest challenges on the Dutch housing market. It’s vital to be more flexible with our real estate. For example, empty office spaces and the high demand for affordable accommodation for starters can balance each other out. By responding to the needs, adaptions need to be made easy and sustainable.
Co-Creation Centre
The Co-Creation Centre is a collection of various research projects. Together they form a sustainable and innovative glass building at The Green Village, which has served as an event centre since June 2020 and offers space to up to 200 guests. The Co-Creation Centre forms the heart of The Green Village, where innovation and co-creation help to work towards a sustainable future.
The most interesting element of the Co-Creation Centre, or CCC for short, is that it’s essentially a collection of different research projects which are carried out by consortia of scientists from TU Delft and entrepreneurs.
DreamHûs
Affordable, comfortable and sustainable living, that’s the idea behind DreamHûs. This experiment is a collaboration between WoonFriesland, Bouwgroep Dijkstra Draisma, The Green Village and Bewonersraad Friesland.
The DreamHûs project consists of three replicated 70’s houses with real residents. One home with the energy label F and two with the energy label B. Researchers, students and entrepreneurs are challenged to find affordable and user-friendly sustainability solutions for these residents, and to test these with actual residents.
Living Lab
The Living Lab consists of multiple homes in which different house related innovations can be researched. Research themes vary from research into the application of new materials, to the testing of new services, water innovations, new installations, building automatisation concepts, DC grids, innovative household products and more.
In collaboration with DUWO, real residents have moved in, so innovations are subject to real use, consumption and feedback. They consist of Dutch and international students for whom sustainability is a lifestyle.
NoNo House
The motivation behind this annex of the Co-Creation Centre is the nitrogen crisis of 2019, which brought The Green Village on the idea of the NoNo House: a building low in nitrogen. The Green Village works closely together with Mecanoo Architecten, ABT, Si-X, BINX, NL Greenlabel, WAM&VanDuren Bouwgroep and Weenk Schroeffunderingen.
One of the starting points was to keep the nitrogen and fine dust emissions as low as possible during construction and to see how the building itself could play a role in the nitrogen uptake from the air. Various sustainable building materials and concepts are being tested.
Office Lab
The Office Lab is the office of The Green Village and offers opportunities for various innovations related to office spaces. Research themes vary from research into the application of new materials, to the testing of new services, water innovations, new installations, building automatisation concepts, DC grids and more.
The Office Lab is set up in such a way that different research parties can easily install and research their ‘plug & play’ innovations. The office is used on a daily basis by colleagues of The Green Village, so innovations can count on real usage and feedback.
Want to get involved or know more?
Willy Spanjer
The Green Village
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