The Netherlands has become home to the most sustainable office building in the world. The dryer and cooler manufacturer Geelen Counterflow in Haelen will use it as its new head office, after the building received 99.94% score from the BREEAM certification system.
According to E&T, the building has been designed for 50 office employees and generates 50% more solar energy than it needs for heating, air conditioning, lighting and computers. The energy that remains is then used in the factory for laser cutting of stainless steel and recharging electric forklift trucks.
Moreover, the building materials have been certified, so they don’t do any harm to the environment, while they can also be re-used when their lifetime period expires. The most important thing about the building is that it’s made out of wood, having the lowest CO2 amount. Thus, there is permanent control of the daylight infiltration, the air quality and the indoor lighting.
"In our never-ending quest to build the best dryers and coolers for food and feed we apply the laws of nature around gravity, aerodynamics and thermodynamics. So when we build a new office it only makes sense to respect these laws and the limits of nature, too,” said Geelen Counterflow managing director Sander Geelen.
As E&T reported, wooden buildings and the use of timber in larger structures has been attracting increasing interest from architects in recent years.
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