Photo: Heine Pedersen

Artelia will supply strategic consultancy for the new residential project ‘Housing from 4 to 1 planet’. Realdania and VILLUM FONDEN have set aside DKK 60 million to collaboratively initiate and fund the project that aims to lower the carbon emission by 75% compared to the average use of CO2 in residential projects. Artelia will facilitate knowledge-sharing and act as client consultant on the building project that will pose as an example which leading industry actors are encouraged to follow.

March 28 marked a sad milestone as Denmark reached its Overshoot Day. The Earth Overshoot Day refers to the day by which the global resources have been used up, and it illustrates how we in Denmark consume 4 times the amount of resources available. We need to act fast if we want to lower our consumption to a sustainable level.

This is the reason behind the philanthropic Realdania and the non-profit foundation VILLUM FONDEN’s partnership through which they aim to inspire the construction industry to build houses that consider the fact that we only have 1 planet and not 4. Housing makes up most of Denmark’s building stock and is therefore an important area to consider. With the new partnership comes a DKK 60 million grant and a central element of the project is to inspire the leading actors on the Danish housing market to construct good examples of houses that focus on innovation and maintain high green ambitions. This part of the project is called Build the Future, and Artelia will act as client consultant on the future demonstrational projects.

We will also facilitate knowledge-sharing as another important aspect of the project is for the new discoveries to benefit the rest of the construction industry.

The power of example
Part of the partnership’s grant is to be invested in the innovation process concerning each project. The client receives financial support for the innovative ideas that are to lift their project to the next level. This might be in the form of time spent for coming up with ideas, tests and documentation of different methods and materials or construction insurance when implementing solutions that have not yet been tested all the way through. In addition, the partnership will offer expertise and data which Artelia is to be the catalyst for all the while experience from each project is gathered and assessed.

The goal is to create an ecosystem of knowledge where we supply expertise and reap the benefits of the new experiences which we can then share across the sector. We have previously been part of Realdania’s demonstrational projects, and we have gained knew knowledge that has benefitted other projects. With this initiative, Realdania and VILLUM FONDEN have lifted their ambitions to the next level. The ambition is to face the climate challenges head on which is necessary if we want to reach our climate goals. We look forward to the collaboration.
Steffen Maagaard
Steffen MaagaardCorporate Technical Director
Energy Design & Indoor Climate

In addition to several of Realdania’s demonstrational project such as Healthy Homes and Mini CO2 Houses in wood, Artelia is also involved in the innovative housing concept Living Places with extremely low CO2 emissions which is a collaboration between VELUX, EFFEKT Architects and Enemærke Petersen. We can contribute with experiences like these in combination with our expertise within sustainability, fire safety, acoustics, indoor climate and timber constructions which is, roughly speaking, all the areas that need to be incorporated to identify the best solutions.

According to the plan, the construction process of the demonstrational projects will start in 2023. In the course of 2022, the partnership will identify the collaborative partners that will contribute to the experiment by constructing the new projects in the form of apartment buildings, attached houses and single-family homes.