Feeling fine because it’s day 9! After taking a train from Rotterdam Centraal to Delft Campus, we walked through TU Delft’s sprawling, wooded campus to get to the Green Village, a hub and live testing ground for sustainable innovations. There, we met our tour guide Lars, who’s a master’s Civil Engineering student at TU Delft. As he talked us through many of the major and minor projects in the Green Village, I saw some fascinating projects in the works. First, we saw the bridge that we had walked over on the way into Green Village, which used no glue! Instead, it was built almost entirely of concrete, with bricks that slotted together in an arc to provide structure. Additionally, the posts at the ends of the bridge were made from 3D-printed concrete, which I thought was especially cool. The lack of glue on the bridge is especially important for the environment considering how toxic construction adhesives typically are.

We also learned about a few of the homes built on the site as well, including one that has integrated glass solar panels, another that runs on hydrogen fuel, and a third that’s modular and easily transportable. A major theme of the Green Village’s operations is solar energy – over half of the roofs have solar panels that either power electric vehicles, homes, batteries for electrical storage, or the hydrogen fuel generator. To conserve and store energy, they are experimenting with drawing energy from car batteries to power the homes, but also storing any excess solar energy generated from the panels in cars and external batteries. Their initial goal for the hydrogen fuel generator was to be able to power one home for 8 days after 8 hours of sun exposure on the solar panels, but with the expansion of the village and the addition of more solar panels they have now far exceeded their expectations. Another design that I found especially interesting were their Bufferblocks, which are intended to prevent the flooding of walkways during intense rain. When assembled, these concrete blocks have a small gap for water to enter and fill their hidden internal chambers, allowing the water to safely and slowly seep into the ground.

After our tour of the Green Village, we got a chance to grab lunch and explore more of TU Delft, one of Europe’s leading technology and engineering universities. The more I walked, the larger the campus seemed to stretch on! Later, I learned that TU Delft is the Netherlands’ oldest and largest public university, so it makes sense that it seemed absolutely massive. A small group of us chose to explore the Mechanical Engineering building, and it was very interesting to see how their labs and study spaces were laid out. I was shocked that we were able to waltz right in to some active workspaces and see what the students there were designing. Then, we headed to the Fellowship building to kick off our Climate Fresk workshop.

The Climate Fresk is an interactive and collaborative card deck “puzzle” intended to raise awareness about climate change. We were separated into groups of five, then were presented with five rounds of cards that we had to sort and make connections between. The cards delved into some of the nitty-gritty details of the causes and effects of climate change but also made sure to include some of the larger overarching themes of global warming. The culminating message of the Climate Fresk is that all of the actions that we take that are detrimental to the environment cause a cascade of negative effects on our society such as war and social inequalities. I found this workshop experience to be enlightening, worrying, and empowering all in one. Although the future looks grim, there are steps that we can take now to try to mitigate and even reverse the effects that climate change is having on our planet.

Notes on Sustainability

It seems to me that TU Delft has a great deal of love for their pollinators! It seemed that in every area I walked, there was at least one bee/bug box. I think that this is a very admirable effort, especially considering how rapidly our pollinator populations are dying out. Without them, our agriculture and gardens will suffer greatly, so it’s very important that we do our best to preserve them.

That’s all for today! Welterusten!