With over six decades worth of experience, we understand the importance of future-proof buildings and how the industry is developing in this area like no other. We designed sustainable buildings long before it became a ‘trend’, because we see the value of sustainability for users and owners. Seinpost Residence, for example, pioneered in the 1970s with the sustainable qualities of prefab construction. The House of the Future in the 1980s was an example project of home automation and PV panels and the office for Blauwhoed was crowned at the end of the last century for its exceptional climate concept with aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES). However, technology has developed rapidly and so have our ambitions.
We take the objectives of the Paris Agreement close to heart but we also realize that even some best practice methods will not be effective enough to achieve them. The construction industry is responsible for a large part of global CO2 emissions. That is why we actively take a stand to push the sustainability parameters for our projects beyond what is legally required. On 21 October 2021 Dam & Partners Architecten signed the ‘Green Deal Houtbouw MRA 2021-2025’, pledging that by 2025 at least 20% of our projects will be constructed from timber or bio based materials.
In recent years, we have worked with stakeholders who share our ambition to make a positive impact on the environment. This gave us the opportunity to use wood on a large scale in projects where it may not seem obvious – such as an 86-meter tall high-rise office building on De Zuidas or in a social housing project in Haarlem.
Unlike conventional building materials, wood absorbs and stores CO2 from the atmosphere. Therefore, it significantly reduces a building’s carbon footprint during construction as well as exploitation. Using wood as the main construction material offers a solution to some of the biggest environmental issues related to the construction of new buildings and is, according to us, the most effective method to contribute to the Paris Agreement.
