The Nature Imperative: How the circular economy tackles biodiversity loss
To halt and reverse biodiversity loss, we need to fundamentally transform the way we produce, use,...
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Villa Welpeloo is a house in the Netherlands constructed from 60% salvaged material. For instance, steel was sourced from machinery previously used in textile production, a once prominent industry in the Enschede region of the Netherlands, where the house is located. The wood used in the façade was taken from 200 damaged cable reels, which gave pieces of a uniform size and shape. This wood would traditionally be turned into particleboard or worse incinerated, effectively shortcutting the usefulness of the material and contributing to climate change, a key direct driver of biodiversity loss. Across all of their projects, Superuse Studio’s aim is “to change the process of design and construction in a way that it would use much less resources and optimally benefit from what a construction site and surroundings have to offer.” In this way, the desire to salvage materials leads to their design process being conducted in parallel with the materialisation process. In the case of Villa Welpeloo, an awareness of the resources available locally aided by using Google Earth’s technology influenced the way the architects actually designed the building.
Biodiversity benefits
Villa Welpeloo’s use of salvaged instead of virgin materials displaced the need for further natural resource extraction, processing, and disposal. Reusing existing materials minimized the construction’s contribution to the key direct drivers of biodiversity loss, such as climate change and overexploitation of natural resources.
