Construction with an eye on tomorrow.
Sustainability, well-being and contemporary design find a home thanks to a new type of building.
Leap develops Made in Italy systems for customised housing that are
more efficient, safe and inviting. Designed for a more enlightened world, the aim is to create zero-impact living.
Those looking to build today encounter a landscape that is radically different from that of a few years ago. One sees a rapidly changing world urgently in search of effective responses to environmental challenges faced by people with a newfound awareness. In terms of housing, hotels or one’s own house, it’s difficult to imagine the building sector having a positive impact without reconsidering everything from the ground up.
Italy’s Leap operates in an industry with a critical impact on the environment, one that is much more at the heart of the debate than commonly cited issues like transportation. Starting with construction sites, the building sector still seems hesitant to reduce the impact of its activities. The way we normally build has profound consequences for the soil that is difficult to reverse; it involves a high consumption of resources and produces a large amount of waste. The inefficiency of this method is then compounded by technologies using traditional materials and inflexible solutions that are likely to fail quickly and which make maintenance difficult.
If today’s world is increasingly calling for a new approach, the conventional building industry lags behind in experimenting with innovative practices.
Against this backdrop, Leap asks to look at buildings in a simpler way: what happens when we apply industrial-inspired methods to construction?
Technical evolution permits the building of homes and hotels using customised modular elements that are produced off-site with high precision processes before then being assembled at the site. This model reduces construction time and the environmental footprint by a factor of ten without sacrificing the final quality of the building. In just a few weeks’ time, builders and architects who collaborate with Leap can create contemporary buildings to meet a variety of demands that are able to accommodate people’s daily needs in surroundings marked by great comfort, thus integrating individual and collective well-being.
A house in Chamois: a Made in Italy with new ambitions
In northwest Italy, the highest municipality in Aosta Valley attracts attention for two distinct features: the total absence of cars and a new house with a pitched roof and large windows that stands out in the alpine panorama of the village.
One of the newest projects made with Leap components, the house of Barbara and Giorgio in Chamois puts into practice an idea of architecture that combines aesthetic and functional values as well as attentive care for the construction processes – it’s a new aspect of Italian design that signals a very specific mission.
With its minimal shapes and spaces full of light, the house shows incredible attention to details, lines and materials. All the components supplied by Leap are designed and produced entirely in Italy as per the need of the client: the layout of the rooms, furnishings and technical systems are fully integrated to give life to spaces where one can fully express their personality and live in harmony with their surroundings.
The use of this intelligent method tells the story of a new Made in Italy. The “Leap houses” reach maximum levels of solidity without invasive interventions on the ground. They are hyper-secure structures capable of resisting earthquakes, hurricanes and other extreme atmospheric phenomena. They are hyper-flexible structures that are extremely modifiable to allow over time the possibility of reconfiguring spaces, finishes and technological features, and all without ever having to demolish what was built or generate waste.
Zero-impact building from the ice to the city
The power of Leap and its idea lies in the fact that it provides the ideal approach for any setting, even the most challenging ones. To test its solutions, the company recently participated in the Ariston Comfort Challenge, an initiative promoted by the international brand of heating systems. The mission: to create a place to feel at home even out on the ice swept by polar winds.
The project, which also produced a documentary film, saw Leap build a scientific base on the remote island of Disko in western Greenland. Assembled in a few days, the Arktic Station outpost regularly hosts researchers from the University of Copenhagen in a comfortable and inviting space despite its location one thousand kilometers above the Arctic Circle. What better conditions to demonstrate the great potential of a construction system for townhouses, country homes and coastal villages?
From the very beginning, the building model proposed by Leap stems from research undertaken in places where nature is most fragile and examining the overall relationship with the environment. Founded in 2012, the company developed its first technologies for high altitude projects, including the new Gervasutti refuge built on Mont Blanc and the world’s tallest eco-hotel on Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus. Building in such inaccessible areas means it is vital to secure the best energy performance, mechanical resistance and weather resistance. Working on site is incredibly difficult, and requires the fastest possible assembly. The offering from Leap starts here.
Why Leap. Responding to today’s challenges with beauty
Leap’s ambition is to develop a more sustainable construction model. For some time, climate change, the shortages of qualified manpower and increasingly stricter home regulations have pushed the industry towards more efficient and ecological solutions. But no one has addressed the key question: if the world has drastically changed, why are houses still built the same way?
Leap draws lessons from the best of Industry 4.0 and applies them to construction. In addition to having shorter lead times, the technique reduces water consumption (-98%) and generated waste (-80%) compared to conventional methods, and the total ecological footprint is up to 90% lower. When work is finished, buildings have a first-class energy performance that classifies as a Nearly Zero-Energy Building (NZEB) or passive house.
Overall, buildings with Leap systems can claim to combat global warming, recording a negative Global Warming Potential (GWP) index, thus capturing more emissions than they generate.
The future for Leap is a rapidly changing and ever complex world. The company works to spread an approach capable of satisfying social, economic and environmental needs while enhancing quality of life. Leap answers the growing call from a multi-generational public from all over the world with its contemporary Made in Italy design for zero-impact living.
