Demonstration of solutions

The acceptance and support by local people for the systemic innovation experiments and solutions in regenerative and circular design at the MVI are critical for the success of this RWL in a direct and indirect way. Whatever solutions we illustrate on campus are meant to spread and scale up, eventually. So success here is a function of implementing solutions that can then be experienced and applied at many levels, in order to foster social innovation, which is entangled with technical innovation.

The public understanding and acceptance first on a local level is being worked on from different angles on different scales, and applying different tools. One particular public perception was that the MVI embodied a luxury home or “palace”. Transporting 55m3 of wood with prefabricated wood walls and further wood fibre insulation is unusual in this place, and the sheer visible chunks of material brought to the building site led to some people’s impression of building a rich peoples’ place. We told to locals that we were not rich and not building a palace, but instead doing our homework of building a proper shell that would bring down the monthly bills for heating plus contribute to a low carbon society combating climate change. The actual switch in public mindset happened only at the public house warming event, when inside temperature in January was +16°C while outside it was -10°C, without heating and people inside, just by passive design. People needed the experience to open up, which completely changed their picture of our project, leading to incremental gains of interest and support.