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10. Mar 2011 - The high art of design: EnOB Summer Academy 2010
Abstract
Yesterday, the EnOB Summer Academy 2010 came to a close in Dresden. It was the second practice-led training event to be offered and conducted by the EnOB research initiative. Under the slogan “Architecture with Energy”, 26 students and young architects were tasked with developing a new use for a specific building in Dresden and planning the refurbishment project as far as the preliminary design stages. The building in question was an old school building in the Dresden district of Lockwitz, which was built in 1906 and has been lying empty since 2008. Yesterday, the results were presented and the outstanding work awarded.
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This year, the EnOB Summer Academy was held in the auspicious surroundings of the Dresden Academy of Arts. The participants were offered an inspiring setting: The building, which was constructed between 1891 and 1895 in the neo-renaissance style, is home to the College of Fine Arts. It is situated on the banks of the River Elbe in the immediate vicinity of the Frauenkirche church and the historical Old Town. Although the building looks very monumental, the large windows provide good daylight conditions in the numerous studios belonging to the Art Academy. From 14 to 23 September 2010, an intense architectural programme was completed in one of the studios: The large room was transformed into a kind of open-plan office with mobile partitions and pinboards. WLAN, Internet and just as many notebooks as participants were the dominant features.
The architecture students and several young architects had come from all over Germany to spend ten days working in small groups in order to draw up sophisticated sketch designs for a specific existing building. Here it was necessary to check and optimise critical wall construction systems in terms of their moisture behaviour, problematic rooms in terms of their ambient temperatures and the entire building in terms of its energy requirements.
The participants were supervised by high-calibre researchers and lecturers from the EnOB research initiative as well as by renowned practitioners from the design and construction fields. In addition, professors Karsten Voss (BU Wuppertal), Andreas Wagner, Thomas Lützkendorf and Bernhard Lenz (both from KIT Karlsruhe), Friedrich Sick (HTW Berlin) and Volker Wittwer (Freiburg) supplemented the multi-facetted lecture programme on current issues in energy-optimised construction. The visits to energy-optimised buildings in the Dresden region were also inspiring. For example, a detailed look was taken at the facade refurbishment of the Dresdner Druck- und Verlagshaus, a sports hall in Weixdorf and the new building for the Saxony State Archive in Dresden, which won the 2010 Passive House Architecture Award.
The Summer Academy was conceived and organised by the architectural faculties at Wuppertal, Karlsruhe and Dresden universities, which are linked to the EnOB research initiative.