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Building from the Stuttgart University team
With their victories in the Innovation and Engineering and Construction disciplines, and the bronze medal in the overall ranking, the team from Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences can be well satisfied with their performance in the Solar Decathlon Europe.
The “home+” design also scored well in terms of its solar power systems and ultimately ensured a reason to celebrate in southern Germany: “We’re all thrilled to have achieved a place on the medal podium at these world championships!” – proclaims the team on its website.
Architecture
The design from the Stuttgart team combines traditional structural principles with modern materials and technologies. The starting point is a compact and highly insulated building volume, which consists of individual modules arranged at intervals in a row. The resulting intervening spaces are used to provide lighting, ventilation, preheating in winter and passive cooling in summer.
A particular role here is played by the “energy tower", which in combination with the wind and evaporative cooling improves the indoor environment. This makes use of well-proven principles utilised in traditional architecture in hot and arid regions, such as the wind towers in Arab countries or the ubiquitous patios in Spain. Combined with the new materials and technologies available today, this creates an element that provides a considerable degree of comfort with low energy consumption while at the same time decisively informing how the building is discerned in design and spatial terms.
Energy concept
Inside, phase-change materials (PCM) increase the thermally effective mass of the timber modules. In order to meet the low remaining energy requirements, the entire building skin is solar activated: The roof and the east and west facades are furnished with a second skin made of solar power modules for generating electricity. This transforms the building into an “energy-plus house”. The energy skin generates electricity during the day and provides additional cooling during the night. For this purpose, water is pumped from a recooling storage tank through pipes behind the modules on the roof. The radiation emitted skywards at night cools the modules and draws heat from the water flowing behind them. The cooled water is then used for regenerating the PCM ceiling inside the building, for directly cooling the floor and for recooling a small, newly developed reversible heat pump that is used to cover peak loads. This combination of solar power modules and a “cooling collector” was specially developed. The building’s modular structure enables further development to form a variable construction system.
Innovations
- Solar power modules with two differently coloured cell types in each module
- Multifunctional building sections (energy tower with adiabatic cooling and solar chimney)
- Solar power modules also have a cooling function in combination with a water-carrying system and PCM
- Reversible, mini-heat pump
Competition performance
Overall ranking: 3rd place
Individual disciplines:
- First prize for Innovation
- First prize for Engineering and Construction
- Second prize for Usage
- Second prize for Solar Systems and Hot Water
- Third prize for Sustainability
Where you can visit the house
From 27 July 2010, the building can be viewed at Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences (HFT Stuttgart) on the car park on the corner of Breitscheidstrasse and Holzgartenstrasse (opposite the Liederhalle) in 70174 Stuttgart. Visitors are requested to register first at annette.kunz-engesser(at)hft-stuttgart.de or jan.cremers(at)hft-stuttgart.de.
Picture credits
Photos: HFT Stuttgart