Sustainable Architecture through Passivhaus & Timber Construction

The earth is currently suffering from natural resource and environmental challenges: climate change (global warming), deforestation, pollution, and so on. Buildings play a very important role and are an existential threat by being the major user of sources and producers of CO2 emissions. Sustainable architecture seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact and has a direct contribution towards these challenges.

Passivhaus has proven to reduce the use of resources to nearly zero energy buildings and therefore can serve as a basis for accurate methods to design sustainably. This report unfolds the Passivhaus concept and its main principles, uses, and methods, followed by applied examples during the work at Rongen Architekten. Furthermore, Passivhaus is questioned on a global scale and the level of its potential to fulfill the sustainability requirement.

The second focus of this research is the (HO_SY) timber construction project. Wood plays a significant role in researching sustainable architecture as it is one of the most environmentally friendly building materials. The aim of this project is the development of an openly accessible timber construction system with a component catalog, calculations, verifications, and examples for the integration of technical building equipment. Alongside, the research is being applied to the “UnseKinder” school and kindergarten design in Stralsund which is made of timber construction and eco-friendly features in terms of architecture as well as school philosophy.