circularity at its best: rotor blades become floating island

Last Wednesday, Vattenfall launched a floating island in the Flevokust harbor in Lelystad. In doing so, the energy company successfully tested an innovative idea from cepezed, which designed the island idea using old rotor blades from Vattenfall's wind turbines.

what if lab
In 2023, cepezed, along with three other design firms, was invited to the "What if Lab" during Dutch Design Week. At Vattenfall's initiative, we explored the possibility of giving a second life to materials from wind turbines that were no longer in use.

unique properties
cepezed explicitly focused on finding a new function for the rotor blades as a whole, so that the unique properties of a rotor blade could be reused, with as little material wasted as possible. This resulted in the proposal to reuse the rotor blades as floating structures.

new space
Due to their length, strength, hollow shape, and light weight, the rotor blades seemed particularly suitable for this purpose. cepezed calculated that if multiple blades were combined, they could form an island strong enough to support housing, farmland, or solar parks—creating new space in an area where land is scarce.

one-on-one Experimentation
After a period of sketching and calculations, it was time to test the idea. “We need to experiment one-on-one to further develop this concept,” says Jasper Manders, architect at cepezed. “Only in this way can we get a 'proof of concept' and understand how the blades behave in water. In this first experiment, we examined whether they actually float and what the best way is to connect multiple blades to form an island.

A fine example of out-of-the-box thinking
Vattenfall had already been recycling parts of turbines. However, given the large number of discarded rotor blades, the energy company considers the experiment crucial. Thomas Hjort, director of innovation offshore wind, said: “It's a fine example of out-of-the-box thinking. With this first test, we demonstrate that this concept offers possibilities we hadn't considered before. And all of this in Flevoland, where there was once only water.”

A presentation of our vision and the results of the floating rotor blade test will be showcased at Dutch Design Week, which takes place from October 19 to 27 in Eindhoven.

read more about the what if lab project here

read more about circularity here