Architect’s Tip: Build simply, live healthily – at reasonable costs

Cur­rent archi­tec­ture is too com­plic­ated. 95 per­cent of today’s build­ings do not work as planned. In many cases, the tech­nic­al effort involved is totally dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the energy sav­ings achieved. The Ger­man Build­ings Energy Act (GEG) in its cur­rent ver­sion and the pro­posed Build­ing Mod­ern­iz­a­tion Act (GMG) place too much emphas­is on pre­cal­cu­lated energy demands. Con­struc­tion must be sim­pli­fied, and the entire life cycle of a build­ing must be taken into account – includ­ing “gray energy”. Gray energy is the amount of energy required for the man­u­fac­ture, trans­port­a­tion, stor­age, sale and dis­pos­al of build­ing products.

Tip 1: Choose technically simple designs

As part of the “Build­ing Simply” research cluster, the Tech­nic­al Uni­ver­sity of Munich built research houses with a delib­er­ately simple design that meet only the min­im­um energy require­ments of the GEG. They have shown that low-tech archi­tec­ture works – regard­less of wheth­er brick, wood or light­weight con­crete are used as con­struc­tion mater­i­als. Five out of six apart­ments con­sumed less energy than pre­dicted. Key design prin­ciples that should be fol­lowed include: single-lay­er wall and ceil­ing con­struc­tions, suf­fi­cient thermal mass to com­pensate for hot and cold spells, and the con­sist­ent sep­ar­a­tion of the build­ing from its tech­nic­al sys­tems.

Tip 2: Properly dimension room height, window size and natural lighting

Oth­er factors of cru­cial import­ance are appro­pri­ately dimen­sioned win­dows and room heights. High-ceilinged rooms equipped with tall, nar­row win­dows let more light enter the deep­er parts of the room. This means that less facade area is required in rela­tion to the floor space, which has a pos­it­ive effect on the indoor cli­mate in both sum­mer and winter. Anoth­er advant­age: Thanks to the rel­at­ively small pro­por­tion of win­dow area on the facade, there is no need for sol­ar shad­ing, which usu­ally con­sti­tutes a clas­sic thermal bridge. Nev­er­the­less, good nat­ur­al light­ing is achieved.

Tip 3: Install pipes and wires on the plaster

In many cases, a float­ing screed (e.g. for accom­mod­at­ing under­floor heat­ing) is not neces­sary. Instead, plumb­ing and elec­tric­al lines can be vis­ibly installed on the plaster (wall-moun­t­ing). If clev­erly designed, the pipes and wires do not neg­at­ively affect the appear­ance of the room.