Pearl in the Polder: a sustainable and circular masterpiece

When construction company De Vries en Verburg in Stolwijk decided to build a new office building, its ambitions were high. Engineering firm Deerns went the extra mile. Together with the construction company, they realized the design of an office with the prestigious WELL Platinum certification and BREEAM 'Outstanding' certification. Linus Klaasen, sustainability consultant at Deerns, talks about the project.

"The special thing about this project is that we all wanted to go in the same direction," Klaassen says. "Everyone shared the ambition for this sustainable building. For us, that was a breath of fresh air. In the end, we even exceeded our own sustainability ambitions for this project."

More than energy neutral

Among other things, Deerns was responsible for the energy advice. In other words, determining how much energy the design of the building generates and consumes and advising how to further improve this. "The plan was to come out energy-neutral, and we are going to succeed. We look not only at consumption, but also at the circular material choice and its consequences."

"When you put energy and material performance together, you end up with the Whole Life Carbon (WLC) method. With this, we not only calculate how much CO2 the building emits annually, but also what the construction and degradation at the end of the lifecycle will result in in terms of emissions. In this way we arrive at a circular assessment with the smallest possible footprint of the building. We compare this footprint with other buildings to see what environmental impact we have saved."

Team Sports

The design phase of the project involved working in co-create workshops; a collaborative methodology proposed by Deerns. The goal was to design, calculate and draw together in three two-day sessions. "Together you make sure it fits. By compromising, you get the best of both worlds. Without this way of working, it would not have been possible to design such a sustainable and healthy building in such a short time. In addition, I have never seen a design team enjoy working on a project so much."