Passive House buildings lead the way

If cli­mate change is to be mit­ig­ated, it is ne­ces­sary for the build­ings we live and work in to con­sume con­sid­er­ably less en­ergy. That is ex­actly what the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te will re­ward with the Pass­ive House Award 2020. The ar­chi­tec­ture com­pet­i­tion will high­light that Pass­ive House build­ings are both sus­tain­able and aes­thet­ic­ally pleas­ing. "With the Pass­ive House Award we wish to draw at­ten­tion to the fact that Pass­ive House build­ings act­ively con­trib­ute to cli­mate pro­tec­tion and that these are soph­ist­ic­atedly de­signed pro­jects. That's what we want to hon­our ar­chi­tects for," ex­plains Dr Wolfgang Feist, the founder of the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te.

Cer­ti­fic­a­tion is a pre­re­quis­ite

Pass­ive House build­ings, Low En­ergy build­ings, and build­ings that have been ret­ro­fit­ted to the En­erPHit stand­ard can be sub­mit­ted to the Pass­ive House Award 2020, re­gard­less of the build­ing use. What mat­ters, is that the build­ings are Pass­ive House cer­ti­fied. Large de­vel­op­ments and dis­tricts are also eli­gible for sub­mis­sion to the award, even if they have not yet been com­pleted. De­cis­ive is an in­teg­rated concept for the sup­ply of en­ergy with a fo­cus on the en­ergy ef­fi­ciency of the build­ings. A pre­re­quis­ite for large de­vel­op­ments and dis­tricts is that at least one of the build­ings is already cer­ti­fied. In gen­er­al, build­ings which have already re­ceived an award in earli­er ar­chi­tec­ture com­pet­i­tions of the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te, are ex­cluded from par­ti­cip­a­tion in this award. Entries for the Pass­ive House Award 2020 can be sub­mit­ted un­til 1 June 2020.

In­ter­na­tion­al jury pan­el

Among oth­er things, the jury will con­sider the design, cost ef­fi­ciency and en­ergy sup­ply of the build­ings. The pan­el will con­sist of in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts, in­clud­ing ar­chi­tects De­borah Moel­is from the USA and Ana Sánchez-Os­tiz from Spain. Moel­is su­per­vised the Cor­nell Tech Pass­ive House high-rise in New York, Sánchez-Os­tiz is the dir­ect­or of the En­vir­on­ment­al Design and Build­ing Man­age­ment mas­ter  pro­gramme at the Uni­versity of Nav­arra. Jury pan­el mem­ber Burkhard Schulze Darup from Ber­lin ad­vises the Ger­man Fed­er­al En­vir­on­ment­al Agency and ad­voc­ated the use of Pass­ive House com­pon­ents in the re­con­struc­tion of the Frank­furt Alt­stadt. Pro­fess­or Song Ye­hau, from China, is the dir­ect­or of the In­sti­tu­te for Ar­chi­tec­ture at the Tsinghua Uni­versity in Beijing. As an ar­chi­tect, he has re­ceived nu­mer­ous awards for his pro­jects. Ar­chi­tect Tom Wright from the UK de­signed one of the most fam­ous build­ings in Dubai, the Burj Al Ar­ab (Tower of the Ar­abs).

Award ce­re­mony

The award ce­re­mony for the Pass­ive House Award 2020 will be held dur­ing the 24th In­ter­na­tion­al Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce on 20 and 21 Septem­ber 2020 at the Es­trel Hotel and Con­gress Cen­ter in Ber­lin. Ab­stracts for the con­fer­en­ce can be sub­mit­ted un­til 2 March 2020. Fur­ther in­form­a­tion about tak­ing part in the Pass­ive House Award 2020 can be found here: www.pass­ive­house-award.org

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