Solar Decathlon Europe - levelup

Project background

The building sector is one of the largest energy consumers, accounting for around 40% of energy consumption and 36% of all CO2 emissions. The ageing building stock in the EU (approx. 35% of buildings are 50 years old or older) contributes to the fact that almost three quarters of all buildings are classified as energy inefficient. In order to achieve the overarching climate policy goals, the EU's current building stock should therefore be transformed into a virtually climate-neutral state by 2045. This can only be achieved through the energy-efficient refurbishment of the building stock, as 90% of building energy requirements are accounted for by buildings built in 2000 or earlier. In addition to decarbonization, new solutions must be developed to meet the increasing demand for affordable housing. Already 77.3% of the German population lives in cities, and the trend is rising.

For these reasons, transferable and adaptable renovation concepts for multi-family houses built between the 1950s and 1970s, which make up the largest proportion of the German building stock, were developed for participation in the SDE 21/22. The existing buildings often have high energy consumption and are in need of refurbishment. The energy-efficient refurbishment and addition of storeys using modular timber construction offers the opportunity to make a measurable contribution to the climate neutrality of existing buildings and to redensification in cities with affordable housing (without further land consumption). As part of the Design Challenge, the levelup team developed a design and energy concept for a building for Siedlungswerke Nürnberg, including the urban context, which follows the idea of climate neutrality.

In the Building Challenge, the interdisciplinary team selected a representative residential unit from the overall building design and built a fully functional, two-storey solar house - the so-called House Demonstration Unit - on a scale of 1:1. At the end of the competition, the residential building was operated on the Solar Campus in the Mirker Quartier in Wuppertal and evaluated on the basis of ten disciplines: Architecture, Building Technology & Building Physics, Energy Performance, Feasibility & Socio-Economic Context, Communication & Education, Sustainability, Comfort, Function, Urban Mobility and Innovation.

Project objective

• Innovative redensification in urban areas by adding storeys to existing buildings from the 1950s to 1970s using modular timber construction and a high degree of prefabrication
• Conversion to climate-neutral buildings over the entire life cycle as a contribution to the European Union's goal of a virtually climate-neutral building stock by 2045
• Circular constructions made from renewable, biogenic, CO2-storing building material wood and recycled or recyclable materials
• Maximizing the building's / district's own use of renewable energy
• Sustainable mobility by avoiding private transport and integrating
• E-mobility in building-integrated power generation
• Expanding the proportion of urban green space through building-integrated greenery (biodiversity)
• Further development of digitized planning and construction process chains from measurement to design and production to assembly (Building Information Modeling, BIM)
• Development of sustainable financing concepts with the aim of increasing the renovation rate and creating affordable housing
• Intensifying the dialog between the players involved in construction
• Innovative teaching concepts through interdisciplinary project work with real implementation and involvement of students in the current challenges in the building sector

Project procedure

In the project, an overall architectural design for the extension of a building in the Ludwigsfeld district of Nuremberg was initially developed in cross-thematic, interdisciplinary and student working groups. All plans were based on the guiding principles of climate neutrality and recyclable construction. In addition, mobility, sharing and financing concepts were developed with the aim of transforming urban spaces for the future and increasing the renovation rate in the construction industry in the long term.

For these reasons, our focus in the competition was on transferable and adaptable concepts that can be implemented immediately in view of the climate and energy crisis. In contrast to other competitions, the principle of the Solar Decathlon is "design - build - operate": therefore, based on the design and energy concept, a representative residential unit was selected from the overall building design and, thanks to modern BIM methods, a fully functional house was planned and built in record time.

In addition to the official competition criteria, self-organization, financing and the acquisition of project partners from industry and research played an equally important role. After an extended project period due to coronavirus, 16 out of 18 teams from eleven countries presented their House Demonstration Units in a two-week public final competition at the Solar Campus in Wuppertal. With over 115,000 international visitors, the competition took place in Germany for the first time and celebrated its 20th anniversary. In addition to a first place in the "Energy Performance" category, the team also won two second places in the "House Functioning" and "Comfort" disciplines.

The team also won the two special prizes "Indoor Air Quality Award" and the "Sustainable Architectural Lightning Award". In total, the team was able to place itself in the top field with 6th place overall after its successful participation as runner-up at the Solar Decathlon Europe 2010 in Madrid.

Innovation

• Driving forward the energy transition: Holistic solutions for the challenges of the energy transition, with high priority given to innovative ideas for increasing efficiency and integrating renewable energies into the demand sectors, among other things.
• Strengthening the industrial location: Picking up on meaningful and new trends, such as digitalization. Furthermore, technological expertise at the university and among the project partners was expanded and export opportunities for energy technologies were increased.
Overall social risk prevention: This includes the international applicability of highly efficient and renewable technologies.