ARS19

This year will be the 14th summer academy on designing a sustainable build environment. When we started out in 2006 and the participants were mostly students of architecture. With last year’s summer academy we had the first time students of the Middle East Technical University (METU) and giz- Mongolia participating. Typically a teamwork approach including architects and engineers sets out with the architects developing ideas and the engineers following up on those ideas and eventually make them work.

Designing a sustainable building though is challenging this setup to a large degree. We therefore reframed the assignment and got engineers and architects into an equal starting position. Reflecting the very reason: why build in the first place? Building space has a lot to do with generating space, protected and comfortable.

The first week this year will be full of presentations and site visits and in the following week a project work will be executed. The challenge to be met is the energetic refurbishment of a prefabricated building from the 70s.

The assigment will reflect cenergy efficiency and limate change issues which ave become the challenge for architects and engineers to address. As Stéphane Hallegatte once concluded: in the future buildings will have be able to function along with the changing climate. Climate is no more considered a static condition but a dynamic situation which will show affects within a lifetime of a building.

This more than ever complex design environment was to be structured by using the relationship of the building to solar radiation and light. We look into designing the envelopes for buildings to provide sufficient daylight without the drawback of overheating.