By Constanze Böttcher, DIRECTION project
Efforts to make buildings environmentally sustainable often focus on the technical side, such as energy efficiency. But there is more to sustainability than just energy efficiency. Sustainability is also about the people using the building. Users should be involved in the planning of a building right from the start, even though this may be difficult in practice.
This is what the planners of the recently completed NuOffice in Munich, Germany, tried to achieve. The building was awarded an international Platinum LEED certificate in Green Building in 2013. “We consulted the tenants extensively and asked about their needs prior [to the construction of the building],” says Oliver Vietgen. The architect works for a company called Facit GmbH & Co. KG, which coordinated the planning and construction of the building.
The NuOffice has now been in use for more than three years and is one of the case studies in the project DIRECTION, which aims demonstrates how technologies can help achieve very low energy buildings. The energy efficiency concept includes a low-temperature heating system, a ventilation system with heat recovery and an external shading system.