Architects Imagine the Dream Homes of Europe’s Green Future
Three leaders in sustainable design envision what buildings might look like once the continent goes net-zero.
Spectacular technology breakthroughs, multiple trillions of euros in investment, and an economic overhaul won’t be enough to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050—it also will need a new look.
Architecture in particular has become a focus for the European Union’s climate efforts. Buildings are responsible for about 40% of total energy consumption in the EU, and for 36% of the bloc’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. But whereas other high-emitting sectors such as energy and transportation have benefited from innovations in renewable power and electric vehicles, construction hasn’t. Cement and steel production remain among the world’s most carbon-intensive industries. Meanwhile, most of the EU’s existing housing stock is old and energy-inefficient.
No less than the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, proclaimed that the climate project should have “its own aesthetics, blending design and sustainability” in a speech in October, calling for “a new European Bauhaus movement.”
The original Bauhaus, an early 20th century collective of designers and craftspeople, is behind much of what we recognize today as modern architecture—clean, sleek, hard. “Bauhaus was a great convergence of ideas,” says Belgian architect Julien De Smedt. “But it’s the symbol of the industrial world, which is our doom today.”
Bloomberg Green invited De Smedt, Casper Mork-Ulnes, and Koichi Takada, all architects known for their focus on sustainability to perform an exercise of imagination. The rules were simple: Pick a place in Europe, design a single-family home to suit that climate, and make it produce more energy than it uses. —With James Tarmy
Stabbur House, by Casper Mork-Ulnes
“The most sustainable square meter is the one you actually don’t build.”
It’s an odd mantra for someone who makes his living building things, but one that fits the Norwegian architect’s operating design principles: “Trim in size, economize space use with architectural integrity, and an economy of means and materials,” he says.
The philosophy is borrowed from Norway’s forest cabins, churches, and warehouses, which have stood for hundreds of years. Built by tradesmen, their designs are functional, and the builders’ attention to detail and mastery of crafts allow the structures to resist extremely cold temperatures and winter storms.
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Mork-Ulnes’s design for Bloomberg Green is inspired by the warehouses, known as stabburs, that stored harvested crops over the long, freezing winter. “It was the most important building in the farm,” he says. Stabburs were elevated from the ground by stone or wooden posts to stop rats from getting in. Sod roofs provided insulation in summer and winter.
This New European Bauhaus stabbur keeps many of these features, but for different reasons.
Building raised slightly to protect it from floods and minimize disruption on the ground. That’s essential in Norway, where large swaths of land are frozen permafrost, which is thawing as the world warms.
Common area on ground floor follows the old Bauhaus aesthetic, with open spaces, straight lines, and large windows on the southern facade. Instead of concrete and steel, it’s made of cross-laminated timber and wood which, maintained properly, can last hundreds of years. Norway’s stave churches, for example, have been standing since the 1100s.
In winter the sun is low and there are few hours of sunlight, so photovoltaic glass generates power. Direct sun on the large glass windows helps warm the interior, an important feature in a country where 60% of home energy use goes toward heating.
In summer the sun is higher and hits the solar panels on the southern side of the roof—which, in turn, provides shade to the lower floor. On the northern side, a sod roof retains snow in winter, captures water, and helps hold in heat.
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“In many ways a single-family home is a problematic question,” Mork-Ulnes says. “Should we be building them?” In Stabbur House, the lower level is a shared space, and the upper floor could be divided to house two or three families. “As human beings, particularly on Covid, we have understood that we love our families, but we still need our own space to get away.”
Flora House, by Julien De Smedt
“If you talk about environmental building and sustainability, the biggest failure of a building is to be taken down. A large part of our aim as architects is to stop this endless new building trend.”
A building generates about half of its carbon footprint during construction, De Smedt says. He prefers circular construction techniques, which involve working with existing structures, using recycled and upcycled materials, and to choose wood over concrete.
That approach fits another aspect of the EU’s building push: to renovate the region’s mostly old building stock. At the moment, about three-quarters of Europe’s buildings are energy-inefficient; of those, only a small number each year are brought up to current energy standards.
Flora House could be an example of how to do that. The project reinterprets a typical single-family house in Brussels, De Smedt’s hometown, where most EU institutions are headquartered. The building has been transformed to house three families. Private areas are smaller, and there’s a whole new space for communal activities such as urban farming.
“This is an opportunity to readdress the issue of heritage vs. the contemporary,” De Smedt says. “In a context that’s historically very loaded, you can show that old and new can be in dialogue. Working with prior styles is not anti-new thinking.”
Wind turbines on top of the greenhouse generate power. Solar panels both create energy and provide shade for the garden.
A water collection system across the greenhouses captures moisture and filters it for drinking, irrigation, and feeding the pool on the first level. In a rainy city such as Brussels, water constantly trickling down the pipes can also generate power.
Fruit trees and other vegetation provide food, and shade in hot summer months. In winter, as leaves fall, they allow sunlight to reach the roof and warm the building. A hencoop generates food for the inhabitants and fertilizer for the garden.
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“We need to create an architecture that has a new focus,” De Smedt says. “We need to change the paradigm of our interests and look into introducing biodiversity in our buildings so we can reknit together the continuum of plants and fauna.”
Sunflower House, by Koichi Takada
“Modernism was based on a static style—a combination of steel, glass, and concrete that I call dead materials. What we are looking at in the 21st century is a shift from industrial to natural. It’s about celebrating the living material and the living architecture.”
Born in Tokyo and based in Sydney, Takada takes his inspiration from trees, forests, seashells, and, in this case, sunflowers. “What nature does is fascinating,” he says. “In artificial structures you need a massive foundation, but with sunflowers nature somehow does this balancing act, with minimum intervention on the ground so the Earth itself also has room for other activities.”
The Sunflower House, designed for the Italian region of Umbria, should withstand and profit from the warming Mediterranean climate, where heat waves are becoming more frequent and more extreme.
Circular roof petaled with solar panels. The entire structure rotates around a central axis, or stem, to follow the sun. This allows the solar array to produce as much as 40% more energy than static panels would, and for the rest of the house to maximize access to sunlight throughout the day.
Energy that isn’t used can be fed onto the grid or stored in batteries. Rainwater is collected and used for irrigation and toilet flushing.
The perimeter around the roof shades the windows below and aids in ventilation. A second rotating mechanism over the glass walls protects the building from solar radiation.
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Each floor hosts a two- or three-bedroom apartment, and each building can be as high as three stories. Scalability opens up the possibility of creating a climate-positive neighborhood inspired by sunflower fields, in which the plants self-organize, adopting a zigzag pattern that avoids overcrowding and maximizes exposure to sunlight.
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“Scientists, designers, and architects talk about drawing inspiration from nature in an aesthetic sense,” Takada says. “We have a much more accurate, purposeful objective. It’s not just making it look like nature, but something that really contributes to greening cities.”