Living Places: A new way of thinking about building

Imagine walking into a home where the air feels fresher than outside, sunlight wakes your body’s natural rhythms, and the walls themselves seem to breathe with you. Now imagine this house was also built with such a low carbon footprint that it makes most new homes look like coal plants in disguise. That’s not science fiction. It’s Living Places — a Danish experiment proving that homes of the future can be healthier for us and gentler on the planet, using materials and technologies that already exist.

This story is about how a group of companies decided to rethink one of humanity’s oldest inventions — the house — together, Danish manufacturer (VELUX), architects (EFFEKT) and Engineers (artelia) asked: can we design a home that increases healthy living conditions while having a low environmental impact? The answer, as it turns out, is a resounding yes. But the way they got there is just as fascinating as the result.

Why reinvent the house?

Buildings are the elephants in the climate room. They’re responsible for about 37% of global CO₂ emissions once you factor in both the energy they use and the materials they’re made from. And while we’ve gotten better at insulating and installing efficient heating systems, the hidden emissions baked into concrete, steel, and glass — what experts call “embodied carbon” — are harder to tackle.

At the same time, our indoor lives have gotten stuffier, quite literally. Even homes that meet official standards often fail to keep occupants comfortable. Think stale air, overheating in summer, or gloomy rooms that never quite catch the sun. If our homes don’t feel good to live in, no amount of green technology will make them truly sustainable.

The Living Places project set out to tackle both challenges at once: radically reduce a home’s carbon footprint while creating indoor environments that nurture health and well-being. Simple idea, not-so-simple execution.

The experiment: Two houses, one bold idea

In Copenhagen, two nearly identical homes were built side by side. One was made with a traditional timber frame, the other with cross-laminated timber (CLT), a newer form of engineered wood. Both aimed to be compact (147 m², slightly smaller than the Danish average), comfortable for a family of four to seven, and designed around low-carbon construction and human comfort.

Key principles shaped their design:

• Shrink the footprint. Smaller homes mean less material and lower emissions.
• Design for health. Prioritize fresh air, daylight, thermal comfort, and quiet.
• Work with, not against, nature. Use natural ventilation, shading, and smart systems instead of energy-hungry cooling.
• Choose materials wisely. Swap carbon-heavy concrete for timber, paper wool insulation, and screw-pile foundations.

To test these ideas, the team didn’t just build the houses and declare victory. They put them through two phases: design simulations (thousands of computer models predicting performance) and real-life testing (monitoring the houses over two months in summer 2024, with nearly 100 people actually staying inside).

Phase one: Designing with science (and simulations)

Designing these homes was like playing an incredibly sophisticated version of SimCity. The team ran 60,000 simulations to test how tweaks in window size, orientation, or ventilation strategy would affect comfort, daylight, and energy use. They even simulated how light would hit a person’s eyes at different times of day to predict impacts on circadian rhythms — the biological clock that governs sleep, mood, and alertness.

What they found:

• Thermal comfort: With smart use of windows and shading, the homes stayed cool even in summer, with indoor temperatures rarely rising above discomfort thresholds.
• Air quality: Strategic natural ventilation kept CO₂ levels low, ensuring fresh air without energy-hungry systems.
• Daylight: Windows were placed not just for brightness but for health. By ensuring enough “melanopic lux” (the kind of light that keeps our body clocks ticking), the design helped support better sleep and alertness.
• Carbon footprint: By using timber and alternative foundations, the homes cut their lifecycle carbon emissions by about 65% compared to a typical Danish house. That’s three times lower than Denmark’s already strict legal threshold.

In short: the models suggested these homes could be both low impact and human-friendly. But models are only half the story. Would people actually feel the difference?

Phase two: Living in the future

To find out, the project opened its doors in summer 2024. For two months, 98 guests — from architects to journalists, aged and young, Danish and international — stayed in the homes for a few days each. Sensors monitored every detail of the indoor environment, while surveys captured how people felt.

The results were striking:

• Thermal comfort: 97% of guests said the homes felt comfortable, day and night. Measurements confirmed it: the houses stayed within top comfort standards more than 90% of the time, without air conditioning.
• Air quality: CO₂ levels stayed low thanks to automated windows that cracked open when needed. Most guests (90%) said the system worked so well they rarely felt the need to intervene.
• Daylight and mood: 83% highlighted natural light as a key factor in their well-being. Many said the varying angles of daylight made the space feel alive. One guest noted: “You notice the light more than in other houses… it gives a more stimulating and dynamic experience of the spaces.”
• Emotional attachment: People didn’t just like the air or the temperature; they liked the atmosphere. 78% reported a strong sense of attachment to the homes and the surrounding community. Materials like untreated wood created feelings of connection to nature, cosiness, and simplicity. As one guest put it: “The house makes it clear you can manage with far fewer things and luxuries as long as you have space and open areas.”

In other words, the experiment confirmed what the simulations predicted — and added something extra: people not only felt comfortable, they felt at home.

Taken together, the experiment quietly proved something profound: we already know how to build homes with around one-third of the carbon footprint of conventional construction and indoor environments that perform two to three times better — all at market price. And because the Living Places principles work in the 1–5-storey buildings that make up nearly 80% of the floor area built today, the message to the industry is unmistakable: there are no excuses left. We can reduce our impact now, with the knowledge and materials already in our hands.

Why this matters

At first glance, this may sound like a nice Danish design story, but the implications go far beyond Copenhagen. Yet even as Living Places points to a brighter future, it also reminds us of a quiet truth: innovation is not a permission slip for endless construction where no new buildings are needed. Instead, it shows how, in the few places where homes truly are missing, we can build with a lighter touch — with care, humility, and respect for the land. This is why the same principles are already guiding the rebuilding of Ukraine, helping ensure we do not repeat the extractive, modernist mistakes that shaped the last century.

The world faces two massive, intertwined crises: the climate emergency and the housing challenge. Billions of people need homes that are affordable, healthy, and with a low impact. If every new house built today locks in decades of emissions and mediocre comfort, we dig ourselves deeper into both crises.

Living Places shows another path:

• Feasibility: Ultra-low-carbon homes aren’t sci-fi. They can be built today, at market price, using existing technologies.
• Scalability: If just 50 units were built, costs would already fit within Denmark’s public housing framework. That’s a sign this isn’t just for the wealthy few.
• Well-being: Homes that actively support health can reduce healthcare costs, boost productivity, and improve quality of life.

Perhaps most importantly, this project bridges a divide that often plagues sustainability: the false choice between what’s good for the planet and what’s good for people. Living Places argues convincingly that the two can — and must — go hand in hand.

Standing inside one of these houses, you might not immediately think about carbon emissions or life-cycle assessments. You’d just feel the cool breeze drifting in through an automatically cracked window, or notice how the morning light makes you feel more awake. But behind that simplicity lies a revolution in how we think about buildings.

The lesson is both humbling and empowering: we already have the tools to build homes that tread lightly on the Earth and uplift the humans inside them. What’s missing is the will to make this the new normal.

So next time you walk into your own home, ask yourself: Does this space make me feel alive? Does it respect the planet that sustains me? If not, Living Places suggests a hopeful answer: it could. And maybe one day, it will.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

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Source

Di Santo, N., Rupp, R.F., Christoffersen, J., Sarran, L., Rockcastle, S., Søgaard, R., Maagaard, S., Bjørkskov, K.B.R., Herrero Gil, J.P., Guglietti, A. & Feifer, L. (2025) Ensuring excellent indoor environments and ultra-low carbon footprint in a single-family house from design to operation. Energy & Buildings, 348, 116425.