Award-winning building opens its doors (and windows) at Hamburg main station

Surrounded by yellow taxis, a dual carriageway and in front of the squat brick building that is Hamburg main station, there’s a wooden hut. From the ‘wrong’ side of the piazza, it looks like building works. Get close to it and you see it's not. It is a house. However, it is so far from the stereotypical image of an English home, that I didn't realise I was entering through a window through the balcony (below) rather than the front door.

This is a Plus-Energie-Haus (here's what the Bundesministeriums für Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklung - BMVBS - says about it in German). In English it's called an Energy Plus House. It could be the house of the future, or at least, as far into the future as our imaginations and technology lets us think.

It’s a copy of an award-winning building. The original won the 2007 Solar Decathlon. The biannual Solar Decathlon is competition run by the American Department of Energy. It attracts entries from teams of students from around the world, all motivated by the challenge to design, build, and operate a solar-powered house that will be voted the most attractive and energy-efficient of that year’s entrants.

Why ‘decathlon’? In addition to being powered exclusively by solar energy, the buildings have to ‘compete’ in 10 areas. The houses are rated in terms of:

· being attractive and easy to live in
· their ability to maintain comfortable and healthy indoor environmental conditions
· featuring appealing and adequate lighting
· supplying energy to household appliances for cooking and cleaning
· powering home electronics
· providing hot water
· balancing energy production and consumption.

In 2007, the winners were….. the team from the Technical University of the German city of Darmstadt. And, the same University did it again in October 2009!

I had the good luck to arrive at the Plus-Energie-Haus when there were no other visitors. The chap 'on duty’ was enthusiastic and knowledgeable. He volunteered information as well as answering my naïve questions patiently and, if he’d been asked the same query 40 times already that day, he didn’t let on.

My second piece of good luck was that just when I ran out of questions, a group arrived to watch the film (shown daily at 4pm as part of a tour of the premises), and then had the opportunity to put their own questions. Judging by the depth of technical detail they wanted, I think they might have been architects, or perhaps people wanting to build their own homes.

The difference between a Plus-Energie-Haus and a PassivHaus is that the former creates more energy than it uses – which it sells back to the national grid for a higher price than it pays for the electricity it buys from it. Since January 2009, the building has contributed 10,0000 Kw to the German national grid.

The example in Hamburg (it’s already been to Munich and Berlin and I believe it will next go to Frankfurt, and from there to Stuttgart) comprises two large rooms, with a bathroom in the ‘core’ and a ‘kitchen’ on the outside of the core walls. Of course, as this is an exhibition piece not a real house, there’s no shower and the cooking area is what the Germans call a ‘niche’ kitchen rather than a 'built-in' (ie complete) kitchen.

Another aspect that might be different if it were your average home, is the glazing. On the southern side, it is three-layer glass. On the north side, it is four-layer glass. Heck, I’ve only just learned you can get triple-glazed windows, and now I’m introduced to the concept of double the amount that’s standard in English homes. Can you even get these items in the UK?

I don’t look at these installations with the eye of an architect, but from the standpoint of the resident. The low energy use, the selling electricity back to the grid, the warm walls (achieved by inserting capsules of paraffin into the building materials, that take up excess heat when the building warms up and release it when the internal temperature falls, but which contain so little that even the container were to break and spill the ‘wall’ could absorb it), the huge windows, the covered balcony… It looks good. It feels good. But there’s a lot of wood to paint, repair or replace, and an awful lot of glass....

Those scenes from comics where the schoolboy with a cap, shorts and one sock round his ankles, hiding behind a wall when father or Mr Jones from next door comes home to see a star-shaped hole in his shed window or his greenhouse, will be a thing of the past… With the amount of glass required for photo voltaic cells, coupled with the solar panels, if these houses become standard, footballs will be banned from residential areas.

The Plus-Energie-Haus is in front of Hamburg main station (Glockengießerwall junction with Ernst-Merck-Strasse) until 25 January 2009.

It is aimed at developers, investors, planners... to show them that energy efficient buildings can be attractive and that they work. It is a prototype for buildings for the year 2015. My guide explained that it cost 1.2m Euros to build this version but by 2015, the technology and materials should be in general production and buying a version in that year should cost rather less - 300,000 Euros.

For more information about the building and the events taking place there see the Zebau site.

(Images courtesy of Zebau.)

Low awareness of low energy housing

One of the two English women at the AZB for work experience relating to sustainable building practices has studied architecture.

The terms 'passive house', 'low energy house' and 'energy plus house' meant something to her before she came to the AZB. I am the second person and I hadn't heard of these concepts. This is despite my reading the two 'quality' English newspapers each weekend, being engaged in eco-campaigning work and, I thought, generally being aware and receptive to topics relating to sustainability.

I felt it would therefore be a useful exercise to ask 10 of my friends in England, two questions:

a) have you heard the terms 'passive house', 'low energy house', and 'energy plus house'?
b) can you explain them?

The receipients were chosen solely on the basis of being a friend. None is an architect or to my knowledge has studied architecture or lives with someone who is qualified in this field. Several are actively engaged in promoting green issues, most are graduates and some have completed, or are engaged in, further study.

Mr Jens Schwarz, the Co-ordinator of the RCE Hamburg and Region, feels the exercise is sufficiently interesting to roll it out among the trainees who come to the AZB.

Of the 10 emails I sent, one person had heard the term passive house but only that person said they could explain it. Three people had heard the term low energy house of whom two responded that they could explain it. No-one had heard the term energy plus house.

People living, working or studying in, Hamburg or visitors to this city (perhaps for the Third European Fair on Education for Sustainable Development which takes place at the AZB this week, ie Wednesday 28 to Friday 30 October 2009) or for the Christmas Markets (23 November to 23 December 2009), have a chance to find out what an energy plus house is.

Next to Hamburg's main rail station an energy plus house has been set up. It will be there until 25 January 2010. See ZEBAU GmbH for details and related events.

Partners exchange details of upcoming events

Numerous and diverse sums up the number and scope of the projects the Hamburg and Region Build with CaRe partners are working on.

On Wednesday 2 September 2009 representatives of six Build with CaRe partners (TUHH, G19, I-SH, IBA, ZEBAU, AZB) from Hamburg and Schleswig Holstein met to provide each other with an overview of initiatives planned by each organisation relating to Build with Care.

A representative of each organisation stood up in turn and presented the details. Each element was summed up on a slip of paper which the speaker attached to a pinboard under one of six headings:

(i) the overarching event the initiatives related to, (ii) details of any related exhibition, (iii) related workshops or information stands, (iv) publicity materials, (v) the outcomes for vocational training, (vi) the scope offered for visits.

Attendees were pleasantly suprised by the number (see photo at the top of this post) and scope of initiatives this activity revealed.

The presentation method also showed there was overlap in events planned and that therefore much could be achieved by joint working and promotion, for example by including details and links of relevant events, on the partners' websites.

Further outcomes were:

(a) an agreement that such meetings were mutually beneficial, that they should take place regularly and often (every three to four months), be kept short (maximum two hours) and that partners should take it in turn to host them. All attendees agreed that there might be occasions on which additional, sponteous, meetings would be appropriate and beneficial,

b)the international nature of work packages, 1, 3, 4, to which the partner were working, should be highlighted as far as was possible , but that this would be difficult with relation to work package 2 as the information related to regional matters.

ZEBAU will host the next meeting in February 2010.