Patrizia has delivered one of the first in a new generation of residential built-to-rent neighbourhood developments in the Netherlands, constructed from cross-laminated timber. CLT is highly sustainable, provides better insulation, is relatively stronger and lighter than conventional bricks and concrete and sharply reduces construction time and costs.
The Hof van Duurzaamheid, (Garden of Sustainability) €40m development of 40 single-family CLT-built houses and seven CLT urban villas in the city of Amersfoort, 50km to the east of Amsterdam, also comprises 63 apartments constructed of conventional materials to provide a measurable comparative benchmark for the sustainability performance of the two components of the rental housing cluster.
Hans Vermeeren, Head of Asset Management at Patrizia Netherlands, said: “The widespread adoption of CLT in construction would offer potentially huge reductions in the embodied carbon within the material supply chain over conventional bricks and concrete, requiring large amounts of energy in their production. It is also far more sustainable in operation for heating and cooling properties, particularly when combined with renewal energy sources, as we are doing with solar panels and heat pumps, which makes the assets 100% gas-free. PATRIZIA firmly believes that this project is an important template solution for the enormous challenge of the decarbonisation climate pathway the world needs to follow at an accelerated pace, because it is being pioneered in housing, the largest asset class of all, as it’s where eight billion of us on this planet live.”
Emile Poort, Country Head of Patrizia Netherlands, concluded: “The approximately 30% saving in construction time that can be achieved though using CLT Is very significant because it means residential projects can be completed at a much faster pace to meet the crisis in the great shortage of housing supply, relative to surging demand, that the Netherlands faces. The Hof van Duurzaamheid project in Amersfoort took 18 months to complete and we only needed eight months of that to complete the 47 CLT units. Compared with the time required to finish the 63 traditional apartments, this represents extremely significant cost savings and is also a very compelling investment proposition for institutional investors considering residential developments. The use of CLT in project construction may potentially boost their investment returns alongside the strong environmental returns that can be achieved.”
