Today we had plenty of time to nap between our morning site visits as we drove out to a family owned tulip farm, a floating neighborhood in northern Amsterdam, and a company that works to design functional buildings with extremely high sustainability ratings.

The Schoonship neighborhood was built by a group of friends with a drive to create the most sustainable neighborhood in Europe. While they might not have had the know how when the initial idea was discussed, they were able to develop their ideal living space in the water where their houses have been build sustainably from the ground up (more like water up). As the project was developed, each member of the community got to design their own house according to sustainability guidelines they set for themselves as a community.

During the construction process a lot of attention was paid attention towards the materials used to built each house, debating whether concrete used to much CO2, and how much of the structure should be wood or metal. Some of these details were decided for the community by what insurance companies were willing to cover, like needing to avoid experimental concrete replacements. The community set other guidelines for its self, like mandating roofs are 30% green space and each house needs to produce enough electricity to sustain its self. By utilizing space on the roof and sides of buildings, enough solar panels can be placed to cover a households energy, and if one house can’t cover its own energy all the time, the neighborhood is on its own grid that can share electricity between houses.

This community is still in a process of innovation. They have made some accidental innovations like solar panels on the sides of buildings being a bit more efficient by being able to take in the reflections off the water. The sewage and waste from the community is sent to a small scale system that can utilize it a an energy source. While this system can’t be used on a much larger scale yet, it continues to be improved on and tested by the community to hopefully scale it.

Lastly we finished up out tours by visiting office buildings designed by EDGE. This company have been developing and redeveloping buildings to have the highest sustainability ratings as possible. This is achieved by incorporating renewable energy like solar into designs, and using smart systems of sensors through the whole building to only utilize energy for ventilation and lights where there are people.

This evening was Liberation Day in the Netherlands, a celebration of the end of World War II, so a group of us went out for dinner to take in the energy of the holiday. We got some amazing ramen and found a celebration for specifically queer liberation taking place near a monument for queer people persecuted during the holocaust.