LOOKING AT NATURE

How do you store rainwater for later use? How do you conserve water and only use drinking water when it is really needed? These issues have been around for years, but it is sometimes difficult to arrive at a unified answer. FieldFactors turned to nature for a solution; how does nature keep water available in times of drought? With the lessons learned in mind, the company is now creating so-called BlueBloqs. BlueBloqs hold the power and knowledge of nature, making extremely efficient use of water.

Nature returning to the city

Karina Peña was sick with the flu at the time of the interview. “Talking a lot makes me cough”, she laughs. It makes things tricky for an interview, but she is willing to give it her best shot. “I came into contact with Wilrik Kok while studying Building and Architecture. We shared a passion for water and started a consulting firm specialized in spatial design and water safety, such as dike reinforcement projects. We really just wanted to achieve something—to find a way to deal with water differently in the built environment. We asked ourselves why cities are built the way they are, and what does that mean for water? Kilometres of pipelines, drainage and supply systems, how efficient is it really, and where are things still going wrong? We then looked at nature, which manages all that itself. Why not bring that back to the city?”

BlueBloqs

In 2016, this philosophizing resulted in a water technology company focused on retaining rainwater for later use. BlueBloqs serve as a natural underground rainwater “battery” for large water consumers that can be built in the city. From the outside, the system looks like a beautiful, green plant bed that connects to the spatial design. It is much more than that, however: it is a compact rainwater storage system that purifies water and stores it underground, after which it can be pumped to the surface.

One of the first applications was at the Sparta Rotterdam football stadium. “They were using drinking water to water the field”, Peña explains. “That is now being done with rainwater thanks to the storage capabilities of our BlueBloqs Urban Water Buffer. And I’m talking about a lot of water— around 20 million litres a year. Our solutions offer a sustainable water supply for business parks, sports facilities and apartment buildings, or a climate-proof redesign of public spaces.”

First Europe, then the world

FieldFactors is working on many pilots in the Netherlands, but there is also growing interest in Spain. That is not surprising, given that water scarcity is an acute problem in Mediterranean countries. BlueBloqs is being rolled out across Europe, which aligns with the company’s short-term ambition. “We are a small group with big ambitions”, says Peña. “We started as two co-founders and are now a team of ten consisting of engineers and technicians. We want to provide our product as a full-service solution to our customers, so it makes sense to start close to home. Our long-term goal is to conquer the entire world; we have had interest from Canada, the United States and Latin America, but we deliberately focused on the Netherlands first. Partly because of scale—so we can stay in control of the system—but also because of regulations, which are very clear and standardized here. Ultimately, our mission is to make Europe water neutral by 2050.”

ronald wielinga interviews frans nauta, faculty of impact