Joost bakker biography of alberta
Soil exploitation has stripped essential vitamins and minerals from the food we currently eat. After 5 years of planning and 25 years testing the concept in various Greenhouse hospitality, events and residential projects , eco-innovator Joost Bakker brings you his latest vision. At the heart of the concept is a system that mimics nature by growing, nourishing and fertilising.
Joost and Norm worked on a number of smaller projects together before joining a major architecture firm for a brief time. They ultimately got together again when landing a six-month study of Granville Island—which led to the start of Hotson Bakker Architects. It was sort of by chance, and I really trust in chance. In early , the pair secured and initiated the Vancouver Granville Island gig after responding to a proposal call.
The six-month study of what to do with Granville Island led to undertaking the full Redeployment Plan. There were no drawings that existed of Granville Island. We basically measured and drew every single square foot of this acre site with its many buildings and structures. We also did a structural analysis of it. So, the interesting part was to then define what constitutes a place of public interest.
Joost bakker biography of alberta
It was a conscious decision to bring a wide array of different types of usage and purpose to the space. Nobody could have imagined how successful this might become. There is an air of excitement about Joost Bakker. You can feel it even before being in his presence: arriving at his Monbulk, Victoria family home and farm which he designed and built one is met by a wall covered in living strawberry plants.
This is where the intrigue begins. He fancied becoming an artist. His philosophy quite literally starts from the ground up: with the soil. Joost has become renowned for his radical, experimental approach to eliminating waste and his new project marks no exception. In essence, the pyrolysis plant converts waste plastic into crude oil by using heat.
The machine uses litres of diesel for this process, but Joost shares the fact that they reuse the diesel from a previous batch. The Monbulk factory is particularly unique because it burns at a lower temperature than average pyrolysis machines, thereby reducing its emissions. Recently he abandoned a long-term project to prove the economic viability of turning plastic back into oil through a process called pyrolysis.
I really thought it was going to get up — we realised a safe and efficient system; most importantly, it was affordable. Plastic is the reverse. Test results were proving fruitful, says Bakker. Then the Environmental Protection Authority stepped in. Bakker in the kitchen of his eco-house. The whole design is open source, which means the money Woodleigh has spent on the design and engineering means other schools can use it for free to get their own built.
The buildings are expected to be ready for the start of the school year, giving Year 10 students the chance to be actively involved in their learning spaces, monitoring which species to plant, the energy use of each classroom, the running of the aquaponic systems and more.