Freiburg City Hall Wins German Sustainability Award

Dr.-Ing.Michael Bauer, Partner at Drees & Sommer SE and a professor of engineering, commented:‘We are very proud of our important contribution to the success of the project, culminating in thissustainability award. Integrated and innovative energy and sustainability concepts such as thoseused in the new city hall in Freiburg’s Stühlinger district, can only be achieved through the closecooperation of all those involved in the project–from the client through the architect to thetechnical planner.’ As the representative of the company and the person responsible for generaltechnical planning for the city hall, he accepted the sustainability award at the gala event inDüsseldorf,along withFreiburg’s city counselor for building and construction, professorMartinHaag, and the architect, Christoph Ingenhoven of ingenhoven architects.
Completed in November 2017, the city hall inFreiburg’sStühlingerdistrictwas the first public netplus energy building in the world. It has a gross floor area of 24,000 square meters and offers spacefor more than 800 municipal employees. But the special feature is that the new building can producemore energy than it needs itself. This means thatthe public administration building covers its ownenergy requirements and is also able to feed surplus energy into the city’s electricity grid. Theelectricity and the energy for heating and air conditioning are produced from renewable energiessuch as photovoltaic, solar thermal and geothermal energy. As a result, the primary energyrequirement of the new city hall is only 55 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year, equivalent to40 percent of the primary energy requirement of a comparable modern officebuilding. Thanks tothis and other special features, the city hall plays a pioneering role in terms of energy andsustainability. Drees & Sommer’s engineering experts were responsible for the energy concept,building services(i.e.mechanical, electrical and public health systems),building physics andfaçadeengineering on the project.