Openly builds the future – why true innovation does not wait for demand
No one in the construction industry is interested in climate change. That's why we're turning building with natural materials into a business case.
OPENLY Manifesto by Andy Keel
Groundbreaker
Building better ways to build
LinkedIN / andy.keel@openly.systems
1) On what basis?
Graham Bell did not conduct market research to invent the telephone. Neither did Enzo, who created the first Ferrari in the Nazi grinding machine workshop in Maranello in 1945, or Steve Jobs, who developed the Macintosh in his parents' garage in 1984. Without wanting to compare myself to these extraordinary innovators, when I started Openly, I also did not focus on the demand side.
My goal in 2022 was to demonstrate that it is technically feasible today to construct a zero-emission building with net-zero gray energy (CO2).
I have always compared the pioneering work in the planning process and implementation to a Tour de France team. Our goal was to win the overall classification, the individual time trial, and a mountain stage. For the Valley Widnau pilot project, we worked day and night with a team of over 20 specialist planners, thinking, changing, and inventing. In the end, we were left with an extremely powerful group 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 invented the personal computer, Openly is ushering in a new generation of buildings. Openly buildings are better, healthier, more efficient (plus-energy), renewable, adaptable, faster to plan and build, recyclable, safer, and offer long-term returns.
“Stupidity makes itself invisible by assuming enormous proportions.” -Bertold Brecht
2) Today, we build incorrectly and poorly.
“The elephant in the climate room” - Prof. Schellnhuber (listen to the podcast here)
The construction industry accounts for 25% of global CO2 emissions, which is about eight times as much as all air traffic. It is essential to understand the Earth as a closed cycle and not to waste resources, but to make them reusable. It used to be common knowledge that an Appenzell house leaves hardly any waste behind; I myself grew up in such a wooden house that is over 100 years old.
The Openly Vision: Buildings as a carbon sink
Office and residential buildings should transform from carbon emitters to carbon sinks. To date, there is no commercially available building system that specializes in carbon capture and storage. Our building system fulfills precisely this task and can store up to 0.25 tons of CO2 per square meter of gross floor area. To protect the climate, we must either store the CO2 emitted underground or bind it in buildings—in addition to measures in the transport and industrial sectors. The relevant technologies for this are pyrolysis and photosynthesis. Unfortunately, only a few scientists, politicians, board members, and organizations such as SIA and DGNB are aware of their importance, or they waste time on unnecessary details.
Together with Carbon Standards International (CSI) and the Ithaka Institute, we have developed the Global Construction C-Sink Standard, a method for certifying the CO2 storage performance of buildings. The standard was created based on the EU CRCF regulation. A pilot project with myclimate.org has already enabled the removal and storage of 10,000 tons of CO2, which corresponds to the cumulative sink performance of Neustark and Climeworks. The potential of buildings as carbon sinks is around 5 gigatons per year—an impressive figure that can make a significant contribution to combating climate change.
Our appeal: Build differently. Rely on renewable and recyclable building materials and construction methods. With or without Openly. We are not the only solution.
3) Openly wants to drive change in the construction industry
The for-profit Openly AG (holding company) is privately owned with no venture capital investors. The pilot project was financed and built through condominium ownership (13 million, 19 apartments). Our motivation has always been to make an impact and build differently – not to create a unicorn startup or secure an income in the lucrative real estate sector so that we could afford a yacht at some point. That's why Openly never had a pitch deck (but it did have a detailed cost and liquidity plan). It was only after the pilot project was completed in the summer of 2024 that we started looking at the future business model. By 2026, we had already reached break-even on our own.
Our strategy is to grow rapidly across Europe through partnerships and collaborations (hence the name Openly). Our short-term goal is to create 500 apartments over the next three years.
More than ten years ago, Baumschlager Eberle Architects set a striking benchmark with the 2226 building, located less than 10 kilometers from Openly Valley Widnau. The building demonstrated that consistent building physics can reduce building technology to a minimum. It was precisely this approach that led to the decision to develop the pilot project in Widnau in collaboration with this firm.
At one crucial point, however, old and new systems of thought collided unexpectedly:
“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.
What is touted as sustainable in the construction industry today often crosses the line into ridiculousness. Institutional investors for sustainable real estate projects are much less common in practice than in presentations. In reality, returns take precedence over all other criteria. This was confirmed by VoC (Voice of the Customer) discussions with over 100 institutional investors.
ESG reduction paths are often limited to portfolio adjustments and the replacement of fossil fuel heating systems. Profound renovations remain rare. In Switzerland, over a million buildings are still heated with fossil fuels, and the renovation rate for multi-family homes is around 1% (i.e., 100 years).
“There are no brave old people in construction” - Andy Keel
Impact of the OPENLY building system
Our goal by the end of 2028: 500 apartments (units) under construction
Avoided emissions: 30,000 tons
Captured CO2: 20,000 tons
4) Partners wanted: We look forward to hearing from builders and investors.
We have chosen our business model carefully and focus on the certification of CO2 sinks as well as project development and implementation as a full-service provider (general planner). In doing so, we deliberately refrain from having our own production and manufacturing lines. This allows us to keep fixed costs to a minimum while creating maximum scaling potential.
We do not operate within the often restrictive framework of architectural competitions without compromising our design ambitions—we pursue these with our subsidiary Valley Architects AG.
As an alternative to Unicorns building systems that rely on large-scale factories, we demonstrate that such gigafactories with high fixed costs are not necessary in an industry that has been operating for decades with very low EBIT margins of 0 to 3 percent and shows little innovation. The cost advantages of our Openly building system arise from an innovative planning and construction process, the standardization of components, and economies of scale in purchasing. Exciting developments in this context include the Spanish startup 011H (with a Swiss VC investor), Kaufmann Bausysteme from the Bregenzerwald (less than a 30-minute drive from us), and Haering in Switzerland.
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 (low-tech) residential ventilation system.
We are currently working intensively on the use of artificial intelligence in the planning process. Our system is designed to drastically shorten planning cycles. This will bring about massive changes in the industry—it is time for architects and the building materials industry to face up to their responsibilities. Until now, they have largely ignored the discussions on efficiency and climate change.
We are open to strategic long-term investments, particularly in the area of Openly Return AG (an investment platform for residential construction projects).
A new era of construction is dawning – we look forward to supporting private and institutional clients alike.
Openly.
“Not all problems can be solved with yoga” - January 31, 2026 Andy Keel
Valley Widnau guided tours every last Thursday (more than 1,500 professionals have already visited us)
Listen to the whole story and vision of Openly in the uncut 75-minute podcast from Baden-Württemberg 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 always believed in the Openly vision.
"You can't win if you're not completely different. If everyone else is calling us completely crazy, then I say to myself, we must really be onto something."
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them"
Openly Valley Widnau 2024 – Europe's largest hemp house