Sustainability challenges for
the new building for Bouwkunde

Andy van den Dobbelsteen, Machiel van Dorst, Anke van Hal & Fons Verheijen
Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft

In advance
Society demands for a built environment that will eventually be largely self-supporting, climate-neutral and 100% clean. At Bouwkunde we can demonstrate how this can be done. The new building for Bouwkunde could become the paragon of sustainable building. The inspiring challenge will lie in the merging of user-based top-quality architecture and front-runner building technology, interacting intelligently with the direct environment. Furthermore, the new Bouwkunde building should be designed for a long future, adaptable to unforeseen functional changes for at least 100 years and anticipating a sustainable scenario in the final phase of the building.

Challenges 
We do not want to precondition the building design by suggesting solutions, rather propose performance requirements that can solved in various ways, in order to stimulate creativity.

General requirements: 

  • The home to all architects
  • Respecting the multi-cultural community
  • Facilitating informal interaction and leisure
  • Facilitating life long learning (design & technology visible, monitored and used for education)

Specific requirements from the viewpoint of health and sustainability:

  • Offering a healthy and comfortable indoor and outdoor environment
  • A time-based design (the structure can accommodate functional and technical changes and the building can grow and shrink)
  • Flexible in use (think of international workshops, conferences, BK beats, yet also regarding staff work and day-to-day activities)
  • Energy-delivering (= producing more energy than used)
  • Climate neutral (= with no added contribution to the greenhouse effect)
  • With a smart water system that reduces the demand of high-quality drinking water for low-grade purposes
  • Using reused materials or materials that comply with the Cradle to Cradle principle (clean, recyclable, eventually becoming ‘food’)
  • Contributing to biodiversity and the production of oxygen
  • Most welcome to users of public transport and bikes

Performance evidence
The achievement of these challenges will be tested by the following requirements:

  • A GreenCalc+ index of more than 500
  • A score of Excellent by the Dutch Green Building Council rating system