DESIGN PROCESS Metabolic Lab is a sustainable design company that takes a systemic and iterative approach to urban and agricultural development. We work on applied projects, making it essential to integrate the users and address practical challenges throughout the process. From the start of the Cleantech Playground project in October 2012, Metabolic Lab actively engaged community stakeholders, utilities, knowledge institutes, technology partners, and other relevant groups in a high-input design process. De Ceuvel and Schoonschip have unique contextual considerations. The entire Buiksloterham region, where both sites are located, is highly polluted with industrial wastes. For de Ceuvel this is of particular concern because no digging can be done on site. There are differing levels of commitment to sustainability between and among the De Ceuvel and Schoonschip communities. The Schoonschip community is a more cohesive, residential group with a stronger commitment to sustainable living. The de Ceuvel group formed more recently and is still evolving. These and other legal, financial, and environmental particularities of the case impacted our design objectives. More details on the site location can be found in Appendix A. Our design process began with defining shared performance goals for both sites (these are listed on the pages 24 and 25 of this document). Once the initial set of goals was established, we followed several design process loops. Our first step was to scan for as many technological solutions as possible by examining the latest eco-community designs and augmenting our existing database of clean technologies with the latest published breakthroughs. We used this technology database as a starting point to create a tangible pallette of options to work with. With this information in hand, set off on two parallel trajectories to help us collect the necessary information for the complete design process: a community and stakeholder engagement path, and a technical design process. These two approaches were used to clarify community preferences, receive advice from external experts, and test proposed systems against technical parameters. COMMUNITY AND STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT De Ceuvel and Schoonschip are separate but connected communities, both of which have existed since 2009. Both communities require all members to sign a manifesto committing them to a sustainable lifestyle. Metabolic Lab joined the De Ceuvel vereniging (association), becoming a stakeholder in the process and part of one of the communities involved in the Cleantech Playground. As a member of the association, we participated in monthly meetings and in sub-teams for the site’s development. We met at least bi-montly with the Schoonschip management team as they also oversaw the development process for the Schoonschip tender. We met with both communities as a group in October, December, and January. We worked with public utilities and government agencies to understand their potential interests in decentralized technology as pilot opportunities for research. We reached out to agencies responsible for different regulatory aspects of the sites, including the water authorities and the local government, to gain a clear understanding of the regulatory process, detailed further in Appendix B. Clean technologies providing resource self-sufficiency are innovating faster than governments’ ability to regulate them. For some technologies, like solar PV, regulatory issues are clear; the technology has been available on the market for decades and is by now ubiquitously used to generate clean energy. Other technologies, such as waste digestion, gasification, and local food production, have more complicated regulatory hurdles. Based on precedent research, Metabolic Lab catalogued regulatory concerns and what they meant for the Cleantech Playground in initial design phases. Nevertheless, new regulatory questions arose throughout the iterative process as we incorporated community interests and the contextual challenges of the sites themselves. 22 / 146 Pagina 21
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