For some, a 4 bedroom 3 bath with a basement theater, wrap-around deck, and two-car garage is the dream. For others, housing that’s quaint, that’s economical—even portable, is the aim.
The market should provide options to everybody, and for those in the latter category of taste, a Dutch company is making little trailer-sized homes from the bosoms of decommissioned wind turbines.
Known as a Nestle—a play on words referring to the turbine component known as a “nacelle”—this two room human hutch is surprisingly luminous and chic.
The 35-square-meter (376-square-foot) pods are built by a company called Blade-Made that uses decommissioned wind turbine parts that are impossible to recycle as materials to build new structures like benches, highway barriers, playgrounds, and even housing.
Inside, a warm north-European wooden finish on the walls and furnishings embody the project’s name, and help convince the occupant to nestle into Nestle’s living space.
Perhaps designed more as a statement on the challenges and potential of upcycling rather than as a direct-to-market product, Blade-Made has nevertheless received orders for 10 of these nacelle homes, having been certified by Dutch authorities under the nation’s building codes.
“Everything in the built environment—everything that you see around you—has an end of life,” Blade-Made’s Jos de Krieger told CNN Style via videocall. “And we need solutions besides waste or landfill, incineration or something without value.”
A challenge facing wind energy is the millions of pounds of fiberglass-heavy material that cannot be recycled but which nevertheless must be replaced every few decades. The initial wind turbine boom has seen its first wave of mass decommissioning, and hundreds of thousands of tons of nacelles and blades will need new homes or purposes.
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“This is basically the most complex thing that you can do with it,” said De Krieger, who’s also a partner at the architecture firm Superuse Studios, one of the home’s designers. “So, all the other less complex things are now easier to imagine and to realize, because this has already been done.”
Many partners were involved with the debut Nestle. Woodwave build the interior, which was designed by Superuse and Reliving.nl. Business in Wind provided the decommissioned V80 turbine nacelle for use in the first model, which was sponsored by Swedish power company Vattenfall.
MORE WIND TURBINE RECYCLING: Old Wind Turbines are Repurposed into Footbridges Capable of Supporting 30 Tons
By 2050, no doubt hundreds of nacelles will be in need of replacing every month across Europe and the world, and every one of them becoming a home seems doubtful. But as is so often the case, design helps us reimagine the potential of many different things, and if by 2050 there are hundreds of people living in Nestles, humanity stands only to benefit.
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