The Passive House Standard - A functional requirement, not biased fixations

Martin Teigeler (of Albert Speer and Partner GmbH) describes his experiences with the implementation of the Passive House Standard in his article "Urban repair with the Passive House standard" in a construction project which at first glance doesn't seem to be very ideal for the purpose at hand: the construction of modern apartments in confined inner city areas.

However, upon closer observation and with careful consideration of the possibilities, it turns out that it is possible to meet this challenge: the advantages become apparent especially in areas with high density construction. Of course, with the extremely high prices for floor space, in such cases the boundary conditions change and this leads to solutions with specially suitable technologies - in situations like this, even expensive insulation materials with very low thermal conductivities become worthwhile. The incentives for investment that are thus created are beneficial: the components initially developed for special applications can also be applied for other projects with different focuses in the medium term - and open up solutions for other climate regions.

 

fig_01: factory premises tramway depot (Bornheim) 2005, Source: Martin Teigeler

The constructive cooperation of architects and specialist planners, as well as the development of component solutions is necessary here. Many examples have demonstrated how successful such an approach can be if an open-minded team works at it.

Martin Teigeler's conclusion after the implementation in Frankfurt, as presented and discussed in Panel Session IX was: "The Project Campo at the Bornheimer Depot impressively proves that urban repair with the Passive House standard can be carried out in an economically justifiable way in the form of compact urban development, without the energy standard having any perceptible influence on the design."

fig_02: reconstruction site plan, Source: Martin Teigeler