Those who are most enthusiastic about sustainable construction will surely be familiar with a term which is now used, more than ever, within circles of architects, designers and structural engineers. We are talking about the passivhaus or, translated from German to English: passive house, a standard of building construction that has its foundations on commitment to the environment.
Officially formed in 1988 by professors Bo Adamson, from the Swedish University of Lund, and Wolfgang Feist, from the German Institute of Building and Environment, the passivhaus was born after the oil crisis and seeks efficiency and savings in architecture.
It was not until the year 1990 that the first prototype passivhaus was built in Germany, a building of four terraced houses in the town of Darmstadt subsidised by the government. After being monitored for a reasonable time, it was arrived at the conclusion that it was, indeed, appropriate in energy consumption and comfortable in its interior.
It is now, on the threshold of 2020, when the race for renewable energy is about to reach its self-imposed goal, when terms like passivhaus, associated with sustainability and efficiency, seem to have found a perfect breeding ground to fully germinate. Along with other concepts such as nearly zero energy, the passivhaus is building the model house of our future and is well worth following closely.
The main objective of the passive construction is to minimise the energy consumption of the homes, ensuring comfortable temperatures at low cost, with the monthly savings of money that this entails for citizens. In this way, construction is seeking reconciliation with the environment and the human race the avoidance of unnecessary impacts and the reduction of attacks on nature.
Source: Linkis
