A design tool for climate-conscious choices

Plant Concept supports architects’ creative processes, making it easy to explore solutions and compare climate impact as they work.

“Plant makes testing building components, materials and systems efficient and user-friendly. Its structure is perfect: it is how I would have built it myself. We have tested many tools, but Plant is by far the fastest in early stages. All our architects can now use Plant as part of their toolkit,” explains Love Berger-Vieweg, Sustainability Specialist at Wingårdhs.

Climate data in architects’ everyday work

Wingårdhs adopted a timber strategy in 2019, always proposing timber structures as the first choice. Last year, this developed into an overall climate strategy aimed at minimising every project’s climate impact through calculations from the start.

“You cannot achieve the optimisation the climate requires through intuition and rules of thumb. You need climate calculations integrated into the design process,” says Love.

Pelle Tunell, CEO and co-founder of Plant, believes integrating climate data into architects’ everyday work is the future:

“With Plant, every architect can take control of climate impact before the first sketch and become a climate adviser at a new level. You do not need to be an environmental expert to make a difference, but you do need accurate climate data and user-friendly software.”

Accurate early-stage climate calculations

When much is still undefined early on, Wingårdhs values how Plant supplements information with statistically based standard values. This supports reliable climate calculations even without complete drawings.

“Plant captures things we have not yet drawn. The standard values for internal walls, doors and other components are surprisingly accurate and give us confidence in early decisions,” says Love.

From figures to action

For Wingårdhs, results must be presented in a way that leads to decisions, rather than simply being collected in a report.

“Even excellent climate data is useless if it cannot be understood. Plant presents results clearly and usefully, giving an accessible overview. That means we can actually act on the information,” Love concludes.