I’m reading a book at the moment called Don’t Build, Rebuild, by Aaron Betsky, all about reusing buildings in a circular economy. It’s taking me ages to get through because every couple of pages there’s an example that I can’t resist looking up on the internet before I read on. This has proved unusually distracting, but it has turned up a few gems that I will tell you about, starting with BlueCity in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
BlueCity is a business hub for the circular economy, with 55 different businesses operating out of the building. Because there are so many people researching and innovating around sustainability on one site, there’s no better place for entrepreneurs to set up and work amongst like-minded folks. There are architects, materials researchers, a company working on recycling solar panels. There are small ideas, like the start-up reducing marine micro-plastic with sustainable glitter. At the other end of the scale, another company is working on making Rotterdam container port sustainable.
Some of the businesses are complementary, such as the firm growing mushrooms on the used coffee grounds from the cafe. Another firm develops industrial applications such as dyes made from fungi. A brewer makes beer from purified rainwater collected off the roof, and the excess heat from the brewing vats is piped through to provide heating to the offices.
All of these businesses are working out of a building that is itself spectacularly repurposed. The Tropicana beach pool opened in 1980 with water slides and swimming pools under a big glass dome. It closed and sat empty for a few years before being overhauled in visionary fashion, initially by squatters and formalised over time. Some businesses are in rooms such as the salon or the changing rooms. Others are in spaces created within the dome, using reclaimed windows from building sites elsewhere in the city.
Obviously it’s best seen rather than described, so here’s a video from Biosphere Solar showing us around when they moved in:
