Living Places: Scaling our way to a Healthier Future
Now we are scaling Living Places in collaboration with partners across the building industry.
To make an impact, Living Places will ensure that more homes balance between human well-being and environmental health, are affordable and accessible to a broader population. Affordability remains a core principle in this vision.
A new approach to partnership
The implementation of knowledge from Living Places takes place through pioneering partners in the building industry who have the courage to push the building industry beyond its comfort zone.
Scaling the concept to different locations, contexts, and configurations is intended as a ripple effect and an opportunity for significant changes in the building industry.
Knowledge is shared through mutual partner agreements, where the involved parties benefit and learn from the collaborative process that takes place.
The partners collaborating with VELUX are investors, developers, contractors, and housebuilders who demonstrate a willingness to change, an innovative mindset, courage, and the necessary competencies to lead the transition to new standards for buildings.
Illustrations by EFFEKT
Flexible and scalable typologies
For Living Places to be truly impactful, it needs to be scaled. Every iteration of Living Places will unfold the concept’s building principles, yet allow for the partner to adapt to contextual needs, like site specifics, house design or family constellations to shape the project.
Think of it as a system which can expand, shrink or multiply, without compromising the vision and integrity. This flexible approach makes it easier to scale, enabling a building system that spans from suburban to urban environments and from new built to adaptive reuse.
Our approach centres on modularity, allowing for versatile building configurations in rows or courtyards with scalable heights. This modular design, adaptable for structures from 2 to 5 floors, focuses on optimizing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and cost-effectiveness.
The choice to limit buildings to a maximum of 5 floors is strategic, adhering to simpler fire regulations to achieve a balance between low environmental impact and affordability.
Flexibility at Its Core
Living Places is not just a design, but a concept and set of principles for creating more sustainable and healthy buildings. The focus is not on a singular design, but on a methodology that enables partners to apply the Living Places principles to develop their own solutions in future constructions.
The principles of Living Places such as health, sharing, simplicity, adaptability, and scalability guide the development of buildings while utilizing data benchmarks to measure the impact of building practices on both people and the planet. The approach involves using tools like Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the Active House Radar to evaluate environmental impact and indoor environmental quality.
Living Places Principles
Healthy principle
Benefiting both people and planet, through the careful selection of materials, building techniques, utilities, and design configuration of indoor and outdoor spaces.
Shared principle
Strengthening the sense of community by combining private dwellings with shared spaces, resources, outdoor areas, and amenities.
Simple principle
Offering a simple modular building system that requires little to no maintenance and can easily be upgraded, repaired and fitted with smart appliances.
Adaptive principle
Creating a scalable solution that responds to the needs for more ways of living.
Scalable principle
By creating homes that challenge the way we design, plan, and finance homes we can unlock housing for the many.
Partnerships
Living Places Copenhagen, the first prototypes of Living Places, served as a living lab for the world, with more than 12,000 on-site visitors across 177 events and activities and 318 guided tours.
SMÛK house, The Netherlands
VELUX and Bouwgroep Dijkstra Draisma launched SMÛK house in Dokkum, Netherlands in 2024. This project demonstrates Living Places’ adaptability and global potential.
Children’s Living Places
SOS Children’s Villages Denmark is creating low-carbon homes for children displaced by war in Ukraine. The project includes foster family housing, psychosocial support, and shared spaces, with construction starting in 2025.
HusCompagniet, Denmark
VELUX shares Living Places insights with HusCompagniet to integrate the concept into future projects, aiming for homes with excellent indoor climates and minimal carbon footprints.
Thylander, Denmark
In 2023, Thylander launched the Build for Life fund to create high-quality rental housing in Greater Copenhagen with a 30% lower carbon footprint than Danish regulations require. The homes will follow Living Places principles: healthy, simple, flexible, scalable, and community-focused.
igloo Regeneration
VELUX partnered with igloo Regeneration to bring Living Places to Sunderland as part of a major urban renewal project. The collaboration promotes healthy, low-carbon homes and sets new standards for sustainable living in the UK.
Domea.dk, Denmark
VELUX and Domea.dk are introducing Living Places to Denmark’s affordable housing sector. Domea.dk will apply the concept’s principles, sustainability, low emissions, and healthy indoor climates, in a full-scale social housing project.
Discover more about Living Places
Want to get inspired and learn more about how you can build people-positive, low-emission housing? Deep dive into all our knowledge learnings and experiences - just here, waiting for you to explore!
Get the Living Places book
Discover the recipe for Healthy Buildings with the Living Places Book – an open-source manual filled with tools and insights that share the knowledge gained by all partners throughout the entire Living Places experience.
Learn more about the scaling strategies for Living Places
Take a walk through the scaling strategies for Living Places, from concept to new prototypes created with pioneering partners that have provided new insights that continue to inspire the housing sector to rethink how we build with a focus on people and the planet.