Educational Building element-i, Karlsruhe, Allemagne
The 360 feet long four-story educational building is located on a narrow plot of land.
Administration, library and a wood workshop are located on the ground floor. The cafeteria can also be used for events, and the theater of the daycare facility can be included and used as a stage. There are science classrooms, an art room with a roof terrace, a secondary school learning house as well as additional dedicated classrooms. The daycare is located on the ground and first floors of the second construction phase. The escape balconies also serve as integrated shading. At the same time, they reduce the expenditure for maintenance and care of the façade.
The building has a reinforced concrete skeleton construction, the interior walls are not load-bearing and offer flexibility in use. Extensive roof greening is planned for the roof surfaces.
A high insulation standard minimizes heat loss. The glazed areas allow a good daylight supply and view. The external, movable solar shading ensures summer thermal insulation. About half of the ceiling surface is covered with acoustic absorbers, while the exposed areas serve as a thermal buffer: during the day, the ceiling stores heat and thus avoids overheating. Night air flushing discharges this thermal mass overnight. Passive supply air elements in the façade enable natural basic ventilation of the classrooms, comfortable even at low outside temperatures. These rooms are designed to enable cross ventilation by opening windows in two directions. In addition, soundproof overflow elements in the partition walls can be used to discharge air towards the stairwell, which acts as a ventilation chimney. The CO2 content of the room air is visualized so that users can ventilate as required. The kitchen and cafeteria / dining hall have central mechanical ventilation with highly efficient heat recovery.
A district heating network (with primary energy factor fP, FW = 0.26) on site enables the school to operate in accordance with the legal requirements of the German Renewable Energies Heat Act (EEWG). This meant, however, that Transsolar was unable to introduce any alternative strategies for heating and cooling into the project. The installation of photovoltaics was proposed to further improve the overall energy balance.
The house offers a healthy and comfortable school environment with minimum technical effort and minimal operating costs.