The Black House forms part of the modular No Footprint House series. The climate responsive designs of the project are based on passive strategies such as site specific positioning and the use of natural resources for cross ventilation, solar shading and energy production, as well as rainwater harvesting and biological water filtration. Industrial construction techniques create a high level of efficiency that can be delivered to any target location, combined with locally harvested and renewable materials to promote integral sustainability and regenerative development for the built environment.

I was educated as an architect, which is a profession that naturally interacts with a lot of other professionals who are related to the process of planning and building. Through personal drive and external influences, I started to look way beyond that group of people to think about development in a broader and global sense. I was lucky to work with a series of masters and colleagues whom I admire and who encouraged me in pursuing that path. My own office now focuses on breaking those boundaries of single professions or perspectives in order to co-create through our interdisciplinary work methodology. We design for development with participatory and multi-stakeholder approaches, which has led us to a very interesting variety of topics and scales that we deal with on a daily basis. The results are often surprising and reaffirming in the sense of finding meaning and added value by working together.

A-01 is an interdisciplinary network organization. In a globally urbanizing society, we work at the borderline of city and countryside or help identifying new synergies between the urban and the rural domain. Our participatory design methodologies are developed to co-create integrally sustainable solutions for urban and rural development. We intend to break the boundaries of a single professional perspective in order to allow for a holistic approach that shapes our products. We envision a long-term impact that involves economic growth, a high quality spatial surrounding, a responsible use of natural resources and an equal social development. This complex set of factors is simply referred to as the 4E of integral sustainability: Economy, Engineering, Environment, and Equity. These multidimensional factors are researched and brought into an optimized relationship, depending on the specific parameters and priorities of each project. All our assignments are carried out with custom fit teams of experts and entities, introducing A Company and its non-profit counterpart A Foundation as operational vehicles. While the company is dedicated to local consulting and planning services, the foundation researches and communicates transformative processes with respect to the urban and rural conditions worldwide. Moreover, we formulate projects to support local populations that have become vulnerable due to these globally shifting conditions. With close to 20 years of professional experience, the portfolio of A-01 includes services rendered in territorial and architectural planning, product and industrial design, renewable energy and mobility concepts, capacity building processes and education, as well as conferences and exhibition designs. Our client list is composed of bilateral and multilateral donors, public institutions, academic entities, non-governmental or grassroots organizations, private companies and individuals.