Natural materials

Bio-based materials are materials that are composed of biomass from a living source and can be continuously renewed. Bio-based materials are becoming increasingly popular because they are much more sustainable than non-renewable materials such as petroleum. For example, it is more sustainable to choose wooden window frames instead of aluminum or a bamboo floor instead of PVC.

If we compare bio-based materials with non-bio-based materials, there are a number of important advantages of bio-based construction. Firstly, bio-based materials are renewable. The logging must come from a sustainably managed forest, where the trees are replanted after logging. Petroleum, on the other hand, does not grow back.

The ecological footprint of bio-based materials is also much lower.

Finally, bio-based materials are generally biodegradable. These materials thus return to the ecosystem cycle.

In addition to being bio-based, the materials we use are pure. We use fair and natural materials such as stone, wood and clay. We do not use plastic composites, as these materials cannot be separated and therefore cannot be recycled at the end of their life cycle.

We believe that these pure materials are worth it to be seen and should therefore be kept in view. Take a wooden main supporting structure, for example. Wood stores CO2, because trees need CO2 to grow. In a way, trees are therefore ‘repositories for CO2’. When wood is used as a building material, the CO2 remains bound to the wood and is not released into the air.

We have created useful pages of our most used materials, in which we explain what it is, what it is used for and why it is sustainable.

We keep a passport of materials for all our projects. This means that we know exactly what the ‘ingredients’ of a building are. This insight makes it possible to literally measure sustainability.

These documented buildings also represent a financial material value. In this way, we prevent buildings from being wrongly depreciated to a 0% value. Demountable elements represent a value and can be reused.

When working on a project, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of all materials with you. These materials together form the building. In this, we include the aesthetic properties, but we also clarify the degree of sustainability.