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Hello everyone, and our best wishes for a great new year from Except.
It's been over six months since our last update, and we thought we'd share some of the exciting things happening here lately. There's so much news worth sharing, we broke it down into three parts for you...
One of the exciting new developments is our new office right in the center of Rotterdam - we are re-using a building that has been sitting empty for more than a decade. We're moving there in the next few weeks, and we're in the process of designing and building most of our own furniture from waste materials, our own LED lighting solutions, and more. The Except offices are co-sited with the Rotterdam Collective, our next big news item.
After several years of work we finally launched our collaborative office, the Rotterdam Collective, in cooperation with with Richard Boeser of Sparpweed. The Rotterdam Collective (Ro-Co) establishes a large inter-disciplinary workplace focused on environmental and social projects. The Ro-Co features shared workspaces and facilities and hosts consultants, graphic designers, event managers, programmers, architects and many more in a truly collaborative setting. The official Ro-Co opening is scheduled for March 1st at 18:30. Join the mailinglist at www.ro-co.nl to be updated about upcoming events such as the film series, opening party, and more.
We have some new people joining us at Except. Ariana Bain, MESc, a recent graduate from the Yale School of Forestry, has joined us in the role of Industrial and Urban Ecologist. Also, Matthew Eckelman, PhD. has joined us as Environmental Engineer and Life Cycle Assessment Professional. Both are representing Except in New Haven, CT, USA.
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Projects:
We've been completing our planning work on an advanced greenhouse area in the eastern Netherlands, featuring symbiotic energy, water, and waste systems. The development is in a beautiful setting where people can come and experience the greenhouses, visit a central pavilion, or just explore the expansive natural setting via its integrated bicycle routes. The details are still confidential, but we hope to soon be presenting it on our website.
We recently designed a two-day integrated sustainability workshop for the Zwarte Hond Architects, a sizable architecture firm in the Netherlands. The workshop focused on fundamental sustainability issues and new ways of thinking about this complex topic. It offered new strategies for both management and design teams, and led to new, long-term strategic directions for the office. The workshop is now available both to businesses and government offices. Find more info about the workshop here.
We continue to work with OnePlanetArchitectureInstitute, RAU Architects and Octalix on finding integrated sustainability solutions for old government buildings, including a prison, several 60's office blocks, and a monument from the 17th century.
We have also been working on the development of a new system for evaluating the sustainability of food products for a large US-based food distributor. Among some of our numerous communication projects, we've helped make some materials for Evelop's Railwind project, which provides a strategy for building windmills on top of railroads. See the short promotional video here.
Another exciting project has been our work on a new form of area development and planning called Growth Planning. It's a second generation planning strategy that optimizes economic, cultural and environmental performance in a performative system. Read up about some of the details of Growth Planning here.
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Publications, research & events:
Eva Gladek spoke at the IUCN Leaders for Nature Forum as an expert on Life Cycle Assesement and its integration with business strategies, and Tom Bosschaert won 1st prize at the Urban Land Institute's on-site competition.
We are continuing to do research for the Green Electronics Council. Except also became a partner of the Dutch Green Building Council, and joined the VVM, the main organization of environmental professionals in the Netherlands.
Except is also in the final stage of training a BREAAM-NL Expert and Assesor, the new Dutch environmental evaluation system for buildings in the Netherlands. Once finalized, we'll be able to consult and assess BREAAM-NL projects in addition to consulting on the place of such assessment systems within the sustainable development trajectory.
Finally, we published a first peek of our in-house developed integrated methodology Symbiosis in Design (SiD). SiD has been developed to make more integrated sustainable projects possible. It's a set of accessible and powerful tools that organize any development process, be it policy, design, development, or management. The power of SiD lies in its simplicity and ability to be applied to virtually any subject or area, making it perfect for strategic long-term analysis and development. Read more about SiD here.
It's been a busy but thrilling couple of months, and we're planning more exciting things in the near future. Thanks for your continuing support and we hope you'll come check out our new office in Rotterdam soon.
Best wishes,
the Except Team. |
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