In the eastern Netherlands, resourceful recyclers 2012Architects
have built a house almost entirely out of locally sourced scrap,
from old billboards to broken umbrellas. Villa Welpeloo in
Enschede, the Netherlands, doesn't look like a recycled
building. Its austere lines and spacious interior have nothing
of the junkyard aesthetic about them. Yet despite appearances,
it's reused to the bones. To accomplish this, architects Jan
Jongert and Jeroen Bergsma of 2012Architects reversed the
typical order of the design process—first house, then
materials—and instead began by scouting the local area for items
to recycle. Villa Welpeloo was the architects' first house,
designed for clients Tjibbe Knol and Ingrid Blans. "Reused
materials account for 60 percent of the structure," says
Jongert. "And that goes up to as much as 90 percent when it
comes to the interior." The benefit of this approach, which
Jongert and Bergsma like to call "recyclicity" or "superuse,"
is, of course, a greatly reduced construction carbon foot