Smart, Sustainable, Energy&Carbon Negative School

Smart, Sustainable, Energy&Carbon Negative School
Jiří Tencar / ECOTEN
1970s school was energy inefficient and was revitalized to Smart, Sustainable, Energy&Carbon Negative building with several innovative solutions

Jiří Tencar / ECOTEN
Prague, The Czech Republic
Links
Team members
Norbert Glejdura
Monika Hrubosova
Marek Machac
Michal Mazanec
Vojtěch Prazak
Jiri Skopek
Pavel Sulc
Michaela Vaclavska
Field of work
Architecture, Engineering, Research
Project category
Renovation
Project submitted
2022

ECOTEN team stands as author and leading designer behind the whole concept, i.e. architecture, energy and technical solutions
Jiri Tencar is the CEO of ECOTEN and revitalization project manager. He is interested in all aspects of sustainability in built environment including remote Earth observation.
Presented revitalization of the school is the most complex project we worked on. We also were successful with producing Hitzkarte – the Urban Heat Vulnerability Map for the City of Wien.


Architecture
- The building is like a living organism it ages as humas – siberian larch wall cladding ages unevenly and horizontal and vertical greenery is taking over
- Well arranged transparent layouts secured movement but were places of meetings expanding outdoor
Environment
- Innovative wooden curtain wall facade ENVILOP as an outcome of Czech applied research at CTU in Prague was used for the first time
- The thermal transmittance of individual structures responds to passive house requirements
- Geothermal heat pumps (heating, cooling and hot water), 147 kWp PVs; 300 kWh battery
- Energy and Carbon negative, i.e. Non-renewable primary energy consumption: nPE = -9,3 MWh/year
- Innovative Predictive Control System: behaviour of the building for the next day was based on a prediction of the building's energy consumption, electricity production and spot electricity prices. The main priority was energy self-sufficiency, then spot electricity prices and then price of battery discharge. All regulation and control systems were in read-only version publicly available including all saved data.
- The grey water from showers and washbasins was cleaned and used for flushing toilets.
- Rain water was accumulated and used for irrigation
- The building had an extensive green roof, vertical greenery even on the two glazed facades providing comfortable diffuse light
User comfort
- The entire building had forced ventilation with air handling units with heat recovery and regenerative heat exchangers controlled by CO2 and VOC sensors
- The microclimate control was automatic depending on the school schedule, the presence of people and could be partially controlled manually
- Ventilation, heating and cooling stopped when window was opened.
- The lights output was controlled by the level of daylight contribution in order to maintain 500 lux at the desk. The blinds were controlled automatically to secure low energy demand. Lights and blinds were controlled manually too