What is a biological home?

Over the past 50 years, humanity has experienced exponential growth and industrial and technological development at a rapid pace. Urban congestion, pollution, work-related stress, and the presence of chemicals and toxins in our environment degrade our health.

From food to the clothing we wear, most manufactured products today contain chemical components that are absorbed by our bodies, whether through breathing, through the skin, or through the food we consume.

The European Union establishes acceptable limits for the human body for many toxic substances, but there is significant controversy in this regard, as while it is possible to establish through clinical studies the safe limit of an isolated component, it has not been proven and it is very difficult to determine the effect of the combination of multiple chemical elements that accumulate in a person throughout their lifetime.

Our homes are not exempt from this controversy, and many of the materials with which we build our houses contain chemical elements that are highly dangerous to our bodies.

However, just as there are increasingly more people who have decided to cook with organic foods, there is a new trend toward ecological and natural construction.

We always like to present this dual perspective, as an ecological home is sometimes not understood as a natural home, and we believe it is equally or more important to build with natural materials that provide health and comfort as it is to focus on achieving energy-efficient homes.

In recent years, the eco-fashion boom has led to the emergence of hundreds of ecological construction companies and with it a multitude of terms that are often used somewhat controversially. There is talk of ecological homes, passive houses, bioclimatic houses, sustainable houses, among many others, but the origin and composition of construction materials are not taken into account.

Therefore, just as when we go to the supermarket and buy organic products, in construction it is necessary to look for the correct label.

How to build a biological home?

A biological home is not the same as an ecological home.

Biology is the science that studies living beings, and the first premise of a living being is that it is healthy. Therefore, when we speak of biological homes, we refer to natural or healthy homes.

We always like to clarify to our clients the difference between a sustainable home and a biological home (healthy home). To help you understand, we will explain it with a simple example: we can buy vegetables at a local production market and be sustainable, but if this farmer is using fertilizers and pesticides in their crops, the products we consume will not be healthy.

For this reason, an ecological home is not always healthy. We can build a concrete house, insulated with toxic or carcinogenic materials, clad with materials that emit radioactivity, and painted with paints that do not breathe. Even so, if this house is well designed and takes advantage of passive solar energy or includes solar panels to produce energy, we will say it is ecological, but it will by no means be a healthy home for the people who inhabit it.

Similarly, building a biological home with natural materials is not always synonymous with sustainability. For example, a stone house is natural, but stone extraction may not be sustainable and much less renewable, as we consume resources that cannot be regenerated.

Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between ecological and biological and to know how to distinguish between what will be healthy for our bodies and for the environment.