(Archive) Building The Body Building

An product design approach to building sustainably

The Body Building, opened in 2023, features multiples homes, an office, a language school, workshops and a large roof garden, on the grounds of the former gasholders in the center of Eindhoven.

It is the outcome of a six year long process, in which we played a wide variety of roles: as initiator, developer, designer, engineer, builder and finally, as user. Being industrial designers by nature, we got fascinated about building sustainably. As relative newcomers to the world of architecture and construction we learned a lot. Yet we also quickly found out that the building industry proved to be unable to cope with unconventional building principles.

This is why we ended up taking the lead ourselves, applying our innovation design approach to the scale of a building, integrating not just functionality, technique and aesthetics but also reconciling aspects like organisation, finance, usability and the practical execution on-site.

The Body Building is named after all inhabitants doing body-related work, and the building process being a very bodily process.

The timber and hempcrete in the Body Building store over 200 tonnes of CO2 which has been subtracted from the atmosphere.

For more information or a round tour

If you like to know or see more or understand what we can do for you, we would love to hear from you via mail@rombout.design.