Graham Bell did not conduct market research before inventing the telephone. Neither did Enzo, who created the first Ferrari in 1945 in the Nazi grinding machine workshop in Maranello, or Steve Jobs, who developed the Macintosh in his parents' garage in 1984.

Today, we build incorrectly and poorly.

“Stupidity makes itself invisible by assuming enormous proportions.” -Bertold Brecht

My motivation in 2022 was to prove that it is now technically possible to construct a zero-emission building with net-zero gray energy (CO2).

“Every change started somewhere” - Andy Keel

I have always compared the pioneering work in the planning process and implementation to a Tour de France team. We want to win the overall classification, the individual time trial, and a mountain stage. Many fell by the wayside during the Valley Widnau pilot project. We worked day and night with a team of over 20 people, thinking, changing, and inventing. What remains is an incredibly strong team of employees, planners, and prefabrication and installation companies across half of Europe. Between 2022 and 2024, we not only reinvented building with natural materials, but also the construction process itself. That's why we call Openly a building system.
Just as the Mac heralded the era of personal computers, Openly heralds the era of a new generation of buildings. Openly buildings are better, healthier, more efficient (plus energy), renewable, faster to plan and build, recyclable, safer, and long-term gems in terms of returns. Like IBM, Kodak, and Nokia, one can only assume that construction companies and building material suppliers have simply followed market studies over the last few decades. VICAT is the only company so far that has been able to show me a credible and serious path to net zero.

2) Why build differently?

25% of global annual CO2 emissions come from the construction industry. That is around eight times more than all air traffic. We need to understand the world as a closed cycle and not waste resources, but use them in such a way that we can reuse them again and again. We knew this in the past; I myself grew up in a wooden house that was over 100 years old.

The Openly Vision: Buildings as a carbon sink

Office and residential buildings should be transformed from carbon emitters to carbon sinks. To date, no one has developed a commercially scalable construction system that focuses on carbon capture and storage. Our building system does just that, making it possible to store up to 0.25 tons of CO2 per square meter of gross floor area. We need to put the CO2 we emit back underground and into buildings—that's how we'll solve climate change. The technologies for this are called pyrolysis and photosynthesis. Unfortunately, very few scientists, politicians, board members, and lobby groups such as SIA, DGNB, etc. have noticed this, or they get bogged down in detailed discussions. With the Global Construction C-Sink Standard, we ourselves have created the accounting logic for these removals together with CSI and the Ithaka Institute, which will be applied under the EU's CRCF. With myclimate.org, a pilot project is underway for at least 10,000 tons of removals (corresponding to the cumulative sink performance of Neustark and Climeworks to date). The potential of buildings as carbon sinks is around 5 gigatons per year.

3) What can you do?
Build differently. Use renewable and recyclable building materials and construction methods. With or without the Openly building system.

4) Investment:
The for-profit Openly AG (holding company) is privately owned without venture capital investors. The pilot project was financed and built through condominium ownership (13 million, 19 apartments). The motivation was always to make an impact and build differently—not to create a unicorn startup or generate income in the lucrative real estate sector. That's why Openly never had a pitch deck, and we only started looking at the future business model once the pilot project was completed in 2024. We will break even in 2026, under our own steam.

Our strategy is to grow rapidly in Europe through partnerships and collaborations (hence the name Openly). Our ambition is to build 500 apartments over the next three years. Our vision also includes building a wooden apartment building in Dubai and growing in markets with climate legislation, such as Denmark and France. Wood-hemp hybrids would also be extremely suitable for the reconstruction of Ukraine—and billions of dollars and all the local raw materials are available for this.

When we ended our collaboration with BEA and 2226 and he threw me out of his office in Dornbirn (AT) screaming, he was probably right:

“You are solving a problem* that does not exist.” - Dietmar Eberle 2023

As long as climate change is not seen as a problem, there is no reason to change anything in the construction industry and architecture. In this sense, MAC 1984 and OPENLY 2022 were pointless, and the construction industry remains the same:

“The elephant in the climate room” - Prof. Schellnhuber (listen to the podcast here)

Accordingly, there is little movement on the buyer side. What is touted as sustainable today often crosses the line into ridiculousness. (The same applies, incidentally, to investments by so-called climate VCs)
Institutional investors for sustainable real estate projects exist largely only in marketing print material. In practice, the ESG reduction path means selling the worst properties (i.e., those that will not be renovated in the long term = greatest possible negative impact on the environment) and replacing gas and oil heating systems with heat pumps. However, there are still over 1 million buildings in Switzerland alone that are heated with fossil fuels, and the renovation rate for apartment buildings is an alarming 1%.
In day-to-day business, little is changing when it comes to investment decisions. From dozens of VoCs (Voice of the Customer), the only pain point in the industry is : > 3.5% return and SNBS Gold certification for Switzerland. Real estate events (at which we have exhibited), such as MIPIM in Cannes (with parties on yachts), Expo Real in Munich, or Immo in Oerlikon, are not places of change.

“There are no brave old people in construction” - Andy Keel

...which is why, until further notice, we are the pirates of the construction industry. That doesn't mean we hijack ships or launch stupid youth or climate activism campaigns. However, we do have freedom, as we don't have to engage in startup bullshit, our fixed costs are covered by our own construction projects, we are not subject to any lobby, and we are not forced to grow or driven by greed.

5) Openly Business Model:

We have carefully chosen our business model by specializing in the certification of C-sinks and project development and/or implementation as a full-service provider (general planner) (our services here), but we do not set up any production or manufacturing lines ourselves, which means we have minimal fixed costs and maximum scaling potential (we think in terms of decades).
We see ourselves as an alternative to the two German construction system unicorns Gropyus and Nokera with their gigafactories. Factories – and their fixed costs – are not necessary, especially not in an industry that has been trying to function with 0-3% EBIT for decades and is notoriously weak in innovation. The cost advantages (or cost neutrality) of the construction system come from a new planning and construction process, standardization of components, and economies of scale in purchasing. Exciting in this context are the Spanish startup 011H (with a Swiss VC investor) and Kaufmann Bausysteme from the Bregenzerwald, less than a 30-minute drive from us.

Openly Holding owns various patents, the milton.earth brand as a CO2 trader, Valley Architekten AG, and a stake in Cancret AG in the hempcrete sector (with initial industry partnerships and start-up funding). Another spin-off for Openly Airbox AG, including plug & play control, is being planned together with Cleverson and Huber Fenster AG. We recently received Minergie P certification for the Airbox as a controlled residential ventilation system.

We are also intensively engaged with AI in the planning process, because building with a system is predestined to cause planning cycles to implode. This is when the guild of architects must be held accountable. The climate debate largely bypassed them—even though it was actually the architects (and today's stars) who were responsible for CO2-intensive building materials.

A new era is beginning. At some point.

“Not all problems can be solved with yoga” - January 6, 2026 Andy Keel

Valley Widnau guided tours (more than 1,400 professionals have already visited us)

Listen to the whole story and vision of Openly in the unedited podcast from Baden Württemberg

Special thanks go to the five Spirig heirs, especially Titus Spirig, who provided the building land for the Valley Widnau pilot project at market prices and who always believed in the Openly vision.