house profile amsterdam

courage
An Amsterdam architect takes the
traditional canal house energy-neutral

Words Anna Cumming

Photography John Lewis Marshall & Hans Peter Föllmi

G
The home’s mezzanine living
room is suspended on an
entire elm trunk cut down and
salvaged from beside one of
Amsterdam’s canals during a
quay reconstruction project.
Photo by John Lewis Marshall

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house profile amsterdam
On a series of artificial islands in a sea lake east of
central Amsterdam, a new residential area called IJburg is taking shape.
The blank canvas is giving designers the opportunity to reinvent the
traditional narrow canal house that characterises the old city centre.
Although IJburg is not specifically a “green” development, for his house
on Steigereiland (Docks Island) Pieter Weijnen of FARO Architects set
himself the ambitious target of complete energy neutrality: zero net
energy consumption and zero annual carbon emissions.
He was well positioned for the challenge. Inspired to take action
after seeing the Al Gore climate change film An Inconvenient Truth, Pieter
designed and built his first energy-efficient house, the Steigereiland 1.0
residence, nearby. During this project, Pieter was already realising that
he could go further. He incorporated a range of new features into the
design for Steigereiland 2.0 and chose materials that fit into a “cradle
to cradle” lifecycle, all with an eye to reducing the house’s lifetime CO2
emissions to as close to zero as possible.
Pieter’s strategy was three-pronged: firstly, he used careful design
and comprehensive insulation to ensure strong passive thermal
performance. This makes it possible for the house’s minimal active
energy needs to be met using small-scale renewable energy technology
– the second prong. Thirdly, the “cradle to cradle” principle: “materials
used in the house can be re-used or recycled without additional CO2
output,” explains Pieter. “For instance, the matting just under the
floorboards is made of old mattresses. This matting is not glued onto the
structure, but lies loose so that when the house comes to be demolished
those mats can easily be pulled out and used again.”
Materials were chosen for longevity and low maintenance. The
house’s structure is timber, with adobe bolstered with phase changing
material in some walls to provide thermal mass. To avoid the need for
paint or other sealants on the exterior, the facade is clad with larch that
has been scorched. This traditional Japanese technique blackens the
surface of the wood, preserving it and giving the house a natural, textured
look.
The result of all this attention to detail is a light, very liveable home
that performs well thermally, even during the cold, dark Dutch winter.
The four-storey townhouse squeezes a generous 230 square metres of
floor space and three bedrooms into its 72 square metre footprint. On
the ground floor, the front door opens into an entryway that acts as an
airlock, insulating the main living space from the outdoors. Through
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house profile amsterdam
Materials used in the house
can be re-used or recycled
without additional CO2 output
the internal door, the open-plan kitchen and dining area is lit by large
windows in both facades. The floor is granite-tiled, acting as thermal
mass to absorb warmth from the sun during the day and release it slowly
at night. Suspended above the kitchen on a beam fashioned from a whole
tree trunk is a mezzanine living room. Above, the upper floors house
three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a plant room.
In his quest for energy neutrality, Pieter paid close attention to the
thermal efficiency of the house. He claims that the joints are not only
liquid-tight but air-tight, and believes that his family has the world’s
best-insulated cat door! The entire building envelope is insulated to
R10, helped by organic wood fibre insulation in the walls and cellulose
in the roof. A flexible Aerogel blanket insulates the very tight spaces.
All windows are triple-glazed and the wooden window frames include
thermal breaks to prevent the conduction and loss of heat to the outside.
In fact, careful thought was given to the elimination of thermal bridges in
every aspect of the construction. Heat is not lost even when ventilating
the house. A heat transfer unit harvests warmth from the “used” air and
transfers it to the fresh air brought in from outside before it is circulated
inside. Extra help to further warm outside air in winter or cool it in
summer comes from a ground source heat exchanger sunk two metres
beneath the house, where the temperature is relatively constant. [For
more on ground source heat pumps, see p72.]
On the roof, an urban wind turbine contributes to the house’s
energy needs, and integrated photovoltaic cells will be installed soon.
An evacuated tube solar heat collector built into the rooftop parapet
provides hot water for floor heating and for kitchen and bathroom use.
Pieter is particularly pleased with the power, heating and ventilation
systems incorporated in the house. “These were all state of the art and
untested when we put them in, and now we can use the results from this
house to innovate for other and larger projects,” he says.
The experience of building his second energy-efficient house has
strengthened Pieter’s feeling “that we as architects should do much G
Large windows on the
more to create a more sustainable environment.” The Steigereiland 2.0 sunny south-east facade
residence is certainly helping. With the small physical footprint of the let warmth in during winter
and are fitted with shade
traditional Amsterdam canal house, its carbon footprint is even tinier – screens for summer. The
narrow windows are
truly a house for a new era of sustainability.
recessed to provide
shading from the sun,
and the facade is clad
with scorched larch. Photo
Further information about the IJburg development: www.ijburg.nl/english by John Lewis Marshall
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Mosa granite tiles were used

for the house’s slab floor.
Wide double doors open to
the south-east facing garden.
Photo by John Lewis Marshall

G
Custom-designed LED lights
at floor level cast patterns on
an upstairs floor, and help to
light this internal walkway.
The custom-made pipes
embedded in the adobe wall
are part of the heat recovery
ventilation system that
operates throughout the
home. Photo by John Lewis
Marshall

D
The family’s favourite thing
about the house is that it’s
light and open, and yet
private. The mezzanine living
room in particular “feels like a
warm nest and brings
cosiness to the vast volume of
D the house”. Photo by John
The elm trunk was lifted into
Lewis Marshall
place early in the construction
process, and the house then
took shape around it. Photo
by John Lewis Marshall

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Amsterdam Residence

Designer Sustainable Features – Scorched larch timber cladding

Pieter Weijnen/FARO Architects Renewable energy – Adobe used for some walls
— Roof-mounted DonQi 1.75kW wind turbine – Spruce veneer and ply products used on the interior
Website for some flooring, stairs and balustrades
www.faro.nl Hot water
— – Evacuated tube solar heat collector system built into Paints, finishes & floor coverings
Project type the rooftop parapet provides hot water for floor Natural wax finish on interior timber elements,
New build heating and for kitchen and bathroom use including walls
— – 2000L of boilers provide a large energy store
Project location for slab heating Sustainable PRODUCTS
IJburg, Amsterdam, Netherlands Phase change materials
— Water saving A phase change material (PCM) is a substance able to
Cost Rainwater is collected in an in-ground tank under store and release large amounts of energy by melting
1550,000 the back garden and used for toilets and laundry and solidifying at a certain temperature. Recently,
(approximately AUD$750,000) building construction materials containing PCMs that
— Passive heating and cooling change phase within the temperature range of human
Size – Clay plaster used on kitchen and upstairs walls comfort have been developed, although they are not yet
House footprint 72 sqm; total for thermal mass readily available in Australia. The Steigereiland 2.0
floor area 230 sqm; land 108 sqm – Phase changing material in the form of BASF house incorporated BASF’s Micronal PCM phase
Micronal PCM paraffin balls used in the walls on changing beads in its adobe walls: microscopic polymer
the top level www.micronal.de spheres contain a paraffin wax storage medium, which
– Large windows have adjustable shade screens absorbs heat above a certain threshold and melts.
When the temperature drops, the wax solidifies and the
D Active heating and cooling stored heat is released. Using products like this can
The fourth floor bedroom.
– A heat recovery ventilation system recycles heat by increase the effective thermal capacity of the material
Photo by John Lewis Marshall
transferring it from “used” air to fresh air without that contains the capsules and dampen temperature
mixing them; the air can be further heated in winter fluctuations, acting like thermal mass. The Your Home
and cooled in summer using a ground source heat Technical Manual states that “the technology offers the
Ground Floor Plan
exchanger located two metres beneath the house. prospect of lightweight buildings that can behave with
1 Entrance airlock
2 Kitchen & dining See diagram on p28. characteristics associated with ‘traditional’ thermal
3 Storage 2 – In-slab floor heating using solar-heated water mass”. At this stage building materials containing
4
Second Floor Plan
The wind turbine on the
– Pellet stove provides booster heat to the warm water PCMs are expensive. www.micronal.de
4 Mezzanine living room
5 Study area
roof provides power for heating system when needed
the house. Eventually, it
5
will be connected to the
– Wood stove in the mezzanine living room for space Insulcon Spaceloft flexible Aerogel insulating
THIRD Floor Plan
1 city’s grid. Photo by Hans heating when needed blanket in very tight spaces
6 Bathroom
Peter Föllmi
7 Bedroom 3 Aerogels are substances that are made by removing the
8 Plant room
9 Bedroom Windows & glazing liquid from a gelled substance without the structure of
Ground Floor Plan SECOND Floor Plan
– Triple glazing to all windows the substance collapsing while it dries. They are the

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fourth Floor Plan
10 Storage – Insulated window frames with thermal breaks lightest known porous solids and the best available
11 Bathroom insulators and are over 96% air. Aerogel home
12 Bedroom
Insulation insulation is made by binding small aerogel beads
– Organic wood fibre and cellulose insulating together with a fibrous matt such as polyester fibre.
6 materials in the walls and roof The end result is a flexible insulator only a few
– Insulation under floor slab millimetres thick that has extremely high insulation
– Entire building envelope insulated to R10 properties for its thickness – more than twice the
10
All windows are triple-glazed – Completely air- and liquid-tight joints insulating ability per centimetre than styrofoam and
7 9
11 for maximum thermal three times more than fibreglass batts.
efficiency and the frames are
12 designed with thermal Building materials www.insulcon.com; www.aerogel.com.au
8
breaks to avoid heat loss.
– Structural timber panel walls with reclaimed
Photo by John Lewis
THIRD Floor Plan FOURTH Floor Plan Marshall timber supports

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Amsterdam Residence

Scorched timber cladding
For the facade of the Steigereiland 2.0 house,
architect Pieter Weijnen experimented with a
traditional Japanese technique known as
shou-sugi-ban, literally “burnt cedar boards”.
The technique involves blackening the surface
of the wood with flame (nowadays often by use
of a blowtorch), extinguishing the fire, and then
scrubbing to embed the ash into the grain of the
wood. The charring preserves the timber
underneath and eliminates the need for paint
or other sealants, and renders the cladding
resistant to rot and fire. Larch was chosen
for Steigereiland 2.0, and the boards were
blackened by lashing them together to form
“chimneys” inside which a small newsprint
fire was lit.
[Ed note: we have not been able to find a great
deal of information on the use of this technique
in Australia, so if you’re considering it – and you
might find it particularly interesting if you’re
building in a bushfire prone area – please talk to
your architect/designer and see the following
resources:
– www.pursuingwabi.com/2007/11/05/
shou-sugi-ban/
– www.materiadesigns.wordpress.
com/2009/12/27/
shou-sugi-ban-terunobu-fujimori-
charred-cedar-siding/
– www.dezeen.com/2009/03/11/
yakisugi-house-by-terunobu-fujimori]

Steps involved in preparing shou-sugi-ban: lashing the

larch together to create “chimneys”; burning the timber;
extinguishing the flame; and the final product in situ in
the Steigereiland 2.0 house. Photos by Hans Peter
Föllmi

How the heat recovery ventilation

system works in winter

Fresh air is drawn in from the roof and heated

by the ground source heat exchanger, as shown
by the solid blue and orange lines in the diagram.
Simultaneously, the central heat transfer unit
harvests heat from “used” internal air before
expelling the air from the home (as shown by
the dashed blue line) and transferring the heat central heat transfer unit

to the incoming fresh air. The warmed fresh air

ground source heat exchanger
is then circulated through the home, after which
it returns to the central heat transfer unit where
any remaining heat is recouped before the “used”
air is expelled outside.

150m tylene tube heat

exchanger in ground

Image courtesy FARO Architects

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