Close to a third of a typical building's carbon emissions are released before it is even occupied, as a consequence of the materials used in its construction. By placing embodied carbon at the heart of our sustainability approach, we maximise our impact on this first phase of a building's existence, enabling our projects to meet the challenging needs of the immediate future. In pursuit of this strategy, we created a set of carbon guidelines that help designers to develop low-carbon proposals. We also developed CarbonSpace, a transparent tool to help reduce embodied carbon from day one of the design process – and released it for free public use.
Sometimes the most sustainable choice is not to build new, but to transform what already exists. Renovation and transformation are among MVRDV’s core strengths. In Shenzhen, we converted an outdated skyscraper from the 1990s into a vibrant Women & Children’s Centre. By reusing the building’s concrete structure, we avoided carbon emissions equal to 11,800 flights from Amsterdam to Shenzhen. Such transformations are fast, impactful, and demonstrate how creative reuse can deliver both climate impact and new cultural value.
Reducing weight is one of our key strategies to cut embodied carbon emissions and deliver Paris-proof projects. Timber and timber-hybrid structures are a powerful way to combine lightness with bio-based materials. In Paris, we realised a mass timber housing project on top of an existing mall, demonstrating the potential of urban densification with timber. In Amsterdam, we are developing a residential tower that is 70 metres tall, with a structure almost entirely in wood. And in Chengdu, we realised a viewing platform and pavilion with a structure of timber arches covered in earth, demonstrating the viability of bio-based materials, and challenging the regulations that usually discourages their use in this location.
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