Project R-2834

Agreement between the UHasselt and PHL in the context of the PhD Vincent Macris titled "NEW CONCEPTS FOR ZERO ENERGY AND ACTIVE BUILDINGS THROUGH PARAMETRIC DESIGN " (Research)

In recent years the emergence of sustainable architecture became more important for the built environment of today. Although the term sustainable is well integrated, it doesnt mean this is reality. For this reason European regulations are striving towards Zero-Energy buildings from January 2021 on, which is until now a goal without sufficient means. The energy consumption will be equal or less than the energy a building produces in a passive and active way and an active building would go further and become an active producer of surplus energy. Today, this challenge is most likely to be solved with superimposed techniques and is rarely tackled with innovative designs merging architecture and technology. These types of buildings are a big conceptual, technical and economical challenge. The research therefore investigates new zero-energy and active building concepts that could generate new ideas and solutions for the future. Research by design with a parametric approach will be used to make digital models with certain interrelations and restrictions, which are optimizing the energy efficiency in an innovative way. The interrelations can be geometric, or non-geometric like energetic or economic restrictions. Using this technique allows the designer to handle a building on a higher level which results in better concepts that go further than traditional architectural designs. This parametric paradigm provides a new type of management of the design and building process and will be used for increase the performance of buildings. The research focuses on the integration and optimization of the energy-saving and energy-producing techniques in architectural concepts through research by design.

16 November 2010 - 15 November 2012