One day, this new Dutch office building will reach the end of its life. Instead of being demolished, each piece of the structure will be reused somewhere else. The floor can be demounted. The windows covering the facade can be installed in another office. The building, which houses the Netherlands-based Triodos Bank , was designed to be fully circular. Built primarily from wood, with towers ranging from two stories to five stories, the building was constructed using 165,312 screws—so if the company ever needs to relocate, or if the office closes, all of the components can be easily disassembled, unlike a steel building that would be welded together and girded with concrete. “We want to maximize circularity in all materials,” says Erik Mulder, an architect at Rau Architects , the Dutch firm that designed the building. [Image: Ossip van Duivenbode/courtesy RAU Architecten] The design aims for sustainability in several other ways. While steel and concrete have large carbon footprints, wood is carbon neutral, since trees store CO2 as they grow. Huge windows fill rooms with daylight, with the help of skylights and transparent walls inside, so employees can avoid using artificial lights. The building, which sits next to a […]
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