Tagged: sustainability

world map made of scrapwood, old planks, plywood and othe recycled material

16. January 2019

The Scrapwood World Map

The scrapwood map the the provinces of the Netherlands was the most popular item in my Dutch webshop in 2018. That does not mean that the map is decorating walls in hundreds of living rooms, but it is still a modest success for this piece of virtual recycling. The World After this achievement, I just had to make a world map in scrapwood as well and here it is… Just like the map of the Netherlands it was rendered in 3ds Max using digital scaffolding, plywood, planks, slats, floorboards and rusty nails. The colors and textures were chosen quite randomly.… Read More

Artist impression of a project for the roof of Maassilo in Rotterdam, with cornfields, a glass and steel windmill, a crop circle and a pancake restaurant

Design / Visualisation

3. October 2018

The Cornfields of the Wheat District, an idea for the Maassilo Roof

The Maassilo on the Brielselaan is one of the coolest buildings in Rotterdam. As a child I was already fascinated by the huge concrete block that you could almost touch when traveling to the city center with the metro. So when this summer a competition was organized to design a skybox on the tenth floor and to come up with an idea for the roof of the Maassilo, I didn’t need to hesitate to join. The same was true for about sixty other designers and design teams from Rotterdam and wide surroundings. History A nice side effect of the competition… Read More

Artist impression of the High Line Baan, a park on the roof of Lijnbaan shopping center in Rotterdam

Visualisation

15. September 2017

From Tweet to Rooftop Park: the High Line Baan

Couldn’t those flat roofs of the shops on Lijnbaan, the pedestrian street in downtown Rotterdam, be turned into a roofpark? I made an artist impression and investigated the pros and cons of such a High Line Baan. Rooftop Days It started with a tweet. At 11 July, I placed a photo on my Twitter account, made during the Rotterdam Rooftop Days. It showed the city’s main shopping street, Lijnbaan, seen in southern direction from one of the adjacent apartment buidings. A remarkable strip of low-rise buildings in a city that’s proud to be the Netherlands’ highrise capital. With a roofscape… Read More

Impression of solar sail Johannes Kepler on its way to the moons of Jupiter against a background of stars with the Earth on the left and the moon in the distance

Space art / Visualisation

16. August 2015

Sailing on the Solar Wind

Probably not everyone realizes that there is also wind outside the Earth’s atmosphere. And that you can also sail in space. Sailing on a different kind of wind, that is: solar wind. The particles that make up sunlight exert force on the objects that are illuminated by them. Johannes Kepler was, in the 16th century, the first to realize the possibilities of a solar sail. He came to that insight while studying a comet. The tail of a comet is caused by the solar wind blowing its particles into space. Sustainable spaceflight The power of the solar wind is small… Read More

Wind farm in the North Sea seen from a low point of view against a spectacular evening sky with a sailing boat as a scale element

Visualisation

17. June 2015

One Thousand Windturbines on the North Sea

There are more and more windmills – wind turbines, I should say – in the North Sea. Good plan, because if it’s windy somewhere, it’s there. And they don’t bother anyone either, you might say. Yet the inveterate windmill haters get furious about wind turbines at sea. Others, like me, find it a pity that those wind farms are so far off the coast. Sustainable “We live on a planet close to its star, with a decent atmosphere, a liquid core and a large moon; if we don’t manage to generate our energy in a safe and sustainable way, we’re… Read More

Front facade of the Green Pyramid, a radically sustainable house in Borne, The Netherlands: a modest entry to a surprisingly generous space

Design / Visualisation

22. June 2014

The Green Pyramid: Radically Sustainable

The Bornsche Maten is a new neighborhood in the municipality of Borne, the Netherlands. In the southern part there’s room for the so-called “Living Wild”-concept: building without restrictive rules, giving the buyer the right to determine the size of the lot and the freedom to choose which style of living suits him or her. There is still room for ten to twenty houses. In a design competition builders and architects were challenged to share their creative approach to living in the 21st century. A jury has reviewed the 39 submissions on originality, comfort, sustainability and innovation; ultimately they selected 18… Read More