Total Engineer Team RSVP has unveiled the renovation design for the Main Building of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, which, once completed, will be the most sustainable university building in the world. On September 27, the design was awarded as BREEAM Outstanding under the BREEAM-NL sustainability label of the Netherlands, with a score of 93.86%.
The university building, which will be called Atlas upon completion, was designed by a multidisciplinary team consisting of Team V (architect), Van Rossum (construction engineer), Valstar Simonis (building installations engineer), and Peutz (building physics engineer and sustainability expert).
We are really proud of and pleased with this result, says Jo van Ham, vice-president of the TU/e executive board. Sustainability is a hugely important theme in our education and research, and this also means taking the lead in terms of our buildings and operations. We have been investing extra in sustainability for fifteen years now, with campus-wide geothermal storage one of the outcomes. This geothermal system is one of the biggest in Europe.
This geothermal system will replace the building’s previous gas connection, and will work alongside solar panels, which will provide energy to cover most of the building’s power requirements.
The building will additionally feature smart and efficient LED lighting—controllable by users via an app—as well as a triple-glazed curtain wall paired with interior sun blinds, and a “night flush” system that will side windows outwards during summer nights in order to cool the building and purify the air.
In combination, all of these sustainability initiatives will reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of the building by 80 percent, even though the number of users in the building will more than double after the renovation.
Upon completion in the summer of 2018, the Atlas building will function as a living lab for research on innovative and sustainable technologies.
News via Team V Architecture.
