Contributing to a better planet trough design
TRUE ENERGY NEUTRAL HOMES OFFERED BY DUTCH BUILDERS IN HUNGARY
Introducing custom-built, healthy homes featuring faster, sustainable construction, keeping in mind not just the environment but also efficiency and affordability — this is what Footprint Homes offers to its clients as explained to Diplomacy & Trade by the Dutch managing directors of the Hungarian firm, Rudolf Nanne and Johannes De Block.
The roots of the idea go back to 2018, when Rudolf Nanne and his wife — who have been living in Budapest since 2015 — decided to build their own family home here. “Naturally, I consulted Johannes, now my business partner, who has a multifaceted background in construction. It was also on his advice and experience that we decided to build a true energy neutral home. However, the process of turning our house plan into a real construction site took much longer than expected. When Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) came into the spotlight in the Netherlands, we realized that this way of building can greatly improve the construction process in terms of speed and sustainability. We imagined that there were many other families with the same experiences after they decided to build their own house. Such families would now benefit immensely from faster and futureproof construction. This was when Johannes and I saw the great potential and decided to start Footprint,” Rudolf Nanne highlights.
Modular design
The term ‘custom-built’ suggests that design and construction are done in cooperation with the customer. Regarding the phases in this process and how much the client is involved in it, Rudolf adds that in order to speed up the design process, they propose to their customers various pre-designed floor plans. “Our designs are also modular. This way, a young couple, for instance, has the option to decide to build a single-story house first. The moment children enter their lives, they have the opportunity to expand their home by, say, building a second floor. Material use and finishes are presented by our collaborating architect-designer as different options and built according to our customer’s wishes. Our idea is to build as flexibly and efficiently as possible, but still build a home to the exact taste of the customer. Think of it as a way you would buy a new car, where you have countless options and in fact no car is the same.”
No gas connection
Sustainability is a catch word nowadays but at Footprint Homes, they mean it as one would expect from Dutch people. As to how they make sure they can maximize the opportunities to make a house sustainable, Johannes De Block stresses that “the basis of our concept is that none of our homes has a gas connection. Our homes are preferably heated and cooled by means of geothermal heat pump system, which may not be the most cost-effective way in all cases, but in any case, it is, in fact, the ideal technical solution and also the most sustainable one. It is the only solution where you can store in summertime the overproduction of your solar panels in the ground until winter. In the summer, it’s the other way around, where you use the stored cold from the winter to cool your house. Other solutions we use, which we believe are essential, are site optimization of the building plot, solar shading, insulation and CO2-controlled ventilation. The latter, in itself, saves half of the heat loss of a traditional (continuous) ventilation system such as balanced ventilation. What makes our building team unique is that we have this knowledge of sustainable construction in-house.”
‘Passive’ is the keyword
Footprint Homes offers sustainable buildings that are not only high-quality and efficient but also affordable. For an outsider, it raises several questions like ‘How do you find the balance?’; ‘How important is the location/environment for the projects?’ or ‘What conditions does the site for a house of this sort must comply with?’ As Johannes De Block explains, “high quality in a home usually stands for a whole range of advanced systems. On the other hand, we like to keep our homes simple but clever in their design. The key lies in our method in which we believe that any location can have a home optimized for that location. For this, we use the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) method, where ‘passive’ is the keyword. Take as an example the geothermal energy as explained earlier. In combination with excellent insulation and clever design, you can save yourself an air conditioning system which is an energy guzzler in itself. ‘Passive’ here basically means that the same result can be achieved, but without a complex and expensive system. This way of thinking is what makes our homes affordable.”
Ongoing projects
At Footprint Homes, they are currently working on three projects totaling ten homes. Rudolf Nanne says his own family home has been designed according to their zero energy home principles and construction will start later this month. “During this process, we formed our construction team of like-minded experts. In the exceptionally beautiful area of Pilisvörösvár, 30 minutes by car or train from the center of Budapest, we recently acquired a plot of 828 square meters. Our collaborating architect from Budapest is currently designing two semi-detached houses on this site. Due to the advantage of building with wooden CLT panels, we expect to be able to start construction this year. This is a great advantage for interested buyers in particular, because they will be able to view and feel this property before we can finish it to their taste in a short time. We are also working with our collaborating architects from Amsterdam on a catalog of our pre-designed and modular homes, as explained earlier. We will first use the catalog for our project, which is located a short distance inland from Lake Balaton in Balatonföldvár. We own a large plot there and we expect to be able to build a total of seven houses for our customers. As more potential home buyers become familiar with our Footprint Homes concept, we expect that more and more building plots in Hungary will be built with our houses,” he concludes.
This article was originally published in the June 2021 print edition of Diplomacy & Trade magazine and also on dteurope.com.
