Impressions in 3D

 

On their new website, "www.architectenbouwmeesters.nl", our architects Rob Wolfs and Ron Hochstenbach have some nice impressions in 3D of what the final result is supposed to be at the end of this year. Visualisations by Pim4 (www.pim4.nl)

Highest Point reached

Christo was here

Looks like we have some unpacking to do before we can celebrate reaching the highest point.

Highest point

"Can you please prepare a short speech for next week to celebrate the fact that we are reaching the highest point ?"

- "What ?!?"

Only a few weeks ago we were still walking around in an empty basement. And now we have reached the highest point of a 2700m2 three floor office ? I must admit I was not expecting this question so soon after we started construction.

The building speed is truly amazing with this system. Every day I walk around now I find myself in new rooms. Only last night the top floor consisted of two spaces only. This afternoon I nearly got lost finding my way back to the stairs.

The German assembly team of Rombach Nur Holz are doing an incredibly fast and professional job. They were not at all slowed down by last weekend's theft of 30.000 Euro worth of building tools. They just drove to the nearest professional tool store (in Germany...) and continued.

The water of last weekend is already gone. The wood dries very fast in this weather and there are no signs of lasting damage. Roofing starts next week.

Still on schedule and on budget.

Gift wrapping against the storm

Well, despite many hours of gift- wrapping our semi-finished wooden office into plastic last week, today's storm was not completely defied. The storm got the better of part of the tent that was built to protect the wood for the weekend, so now we have plenty of water inside. Luckily we seem to have a good week ahead of us to let everything dry out. 

We were told not to worry about any lasting effects of the rain on the wood...

On top of that, the wood assembly crew will return from the Schwarzwald tomorrow morning to find that their storage- and tools container was broken into... Probably some tools missing, so hopefully not too much delay because of that. 

Let's get on with it!

Amazing how fast they progress now. Just over 2 weeks ago we were still looking at an empty basement. Now the first floor is almost finished. End of next week the second floor will be finished and the week after we will start with the roofing (bio-based of course).

Meanwhile I have calculated that our use of 1200m3 of massive wood reduces the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by around 2400 tons of CO2. And that does not yet include the much bigger contribution we will make by saving energy and compensating our energy consumption by generating more renewable energy than this building and its users need. More on that later...

Roughly 45% of this 2400 tons in greenhouse gas reduction is because trees absorb CO2 during their lifetime by photosynthesis. The remaining 55% is the result of substituting other building materials such as concrete, brick or steel.

The 2400 tons of saved CO2 are equivalent to the exhaust of greenhouse gases by 280 homes for one year or by roughly 1,5 million truck kilometres. However, I should mention that the 30 truck loads from Southern Germany reduce that number by about 30.000 kilometres :-)

Using wood for construction stimulates the fast growing forests in Europe. The growth of such sustainably managed forests partially compensates the ever increasing exhaust of greenhouse gases and the deforestation in developing countries. So this is a win-win: reduce our dependency on fossil fuels for building materials and increase the amount of CO2 that is absorbed from the atmosphere.

I draw the same conclusion from every sustainability project I have done in the last 5 years: there is really no need to wait for new advanced technology to solve the climate crisis. Let's just get on with it!