Real-world experience—that’s what construction is all about. How projects unfold and what we can learn from them. That’s why people who are out in the field regularly stop by Bureau Stoer. And what do they encounter there? They talk about it with great passion.
Competitors working together as colleagues
With the Merwede project in Utrecht, we’re right in the Champions League of urban development. The ambitions of this inner-city housing project are sky-high. But it certainly isn’t a walk in the park, as Mirjam Schmüll and Niel Glas explained in this episode of Bureau Stoer. The so-called Merwede Lab is particularly impressive. There, competitors work together as colleagues. Try finding that anywhere else!
No doubt about the material
Timber-frame homes with hemp in the walls and roof elements, while construction workers long for concrete. Dienke Slatman of Heijmans started out as a carpenter and now develops highly sustainable homes. What makes this project special is that it involves row houses, especially since stricter standards apply to them. Yet she has no doubts about the material. “This is the way forward,” she says in this moving episode of Bureau Stoer.
Enabling all systems to communicate intelligently with each other to prevent grid congestion
“It’s a true playground of innovation!” says Tom Selten of Zympler about the Eindhoven University of Technology campus. “We see this as the Netherlands in miniature; absolutely everything is present here on a small scale.” And in that small world, grid congestion is also an issue—one that Tom has addressed with his project. “It’s up to us to make all the systems ‘talk’ to each other intelligently and manage power and electricity more efficiently. In the Netherlands, we don’t have an energy problem—we have a capacity problem.”
A car-sharing vehicle as part of the housing development
“This could become a great export product for the province of Friesland,” says Dick van Ginkel in this surprising episode of Bureau Stoer. Wietse de Vries, innovation manager at Dijstra Draisma, talks about the so-called “Buurblok,” where residents share electricity, heat, and two cars. “The cheapest option was to buy a used Tesla. Take the wheels off and you’ve got a battery. But we said: leave the wheels on and let residents actually use the cars.”
Solid wood, no sprinklers, no HVAC system
“The building is made entirely of solid wood and insulated with lime-hemp,” says Oresti Sarafopoulos of OZ Architects. “The structure is also fire-safe without us having to go to great lengths to achieve it: no drywall, no carpentry, and not even a sprinkler system. Once again, it’s a dead simple building.” What’s also remarkable is that the building will be completely free of mechanical systems. “It’s a building without HVAC systems. It stores an incredible amount of CO2 and is comparable in price to a conventional building.”
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