Active Houses
The VKR Group has ca. 15,000 employees in more than 40 countries; experts in windows, thermal solar energy ventilation and indoor climate. Now they will build eight Active Houses, and let people live in them for a year.
An active house produces more energy than it consumes. This is the Model 2020 in Aarhus, Denmark.
From 2008 VKR Holding will build eight so called active houses in a number of European countries. The houses will produce energy and will - after the principle of "Active House" - be examples of buildings with low energy consumption, a healthy indoor climate and an outstanding architecture.
Family homes
Six family homes will be built, one renovation project and one municipality building that all will contribute with new knowledge about Active Houses. Each house has its own distinctive character as it will reflect and respond to the specific climatic, cultural and architectural conditions of the country in which it is built. The eight houses all have that in common that they are built according to a holistic perspective on uniting efficient and aesthetic energy design with comfort and minimum climate impact.
Monitoring and evaluation
The experiment will run for 6-24 months. When the houses are constructed, real people will move in to test how they experience living there and not least to see if the comfort, indoor climate and energy estimations live up to expectations. Throughout the entire project we will continue to monitor the experiments to continuously revise our models and ideas. In this way we ensure that future active houses are constantly developed and improved. After a test period of 1-2 years the family homes will be sold to families.
Real testing
It is important that the vision and principles behind Active House are tested and developed. Even though numerous experts have made careful calculations and estimates for the energy consumption, it is not until real people move in to test the buildings that we create new knowledge about how the houses actually perform in real life conditions. That is why VKR Holding is launching a scientific experiment in order to get closer to a new suggestion and standard for sustainable buildings of the future.
Further reading
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