2010-01-29 - Following a fire in 2003, the school centre was rebuilt to a higher standard and incorporated intelligent building control, reducing its energy consumption by about one-third.
After the fire, the school centre was rebuilt to passive house standards.*
The new building is about 14,000 square metres extending over three floors. It incorporates 206 rooms, 42 of which are class rooms, 51 are used as specialist rooms.
The KNX installation consists of 14 lines with a total of 525 KNX components. The individual applications include timer controlled lighting, presence detection in the toilets, and blind control with an automatic heating/cooling function.
When a room is not in use, the blinds remain open in winter and closed in summer. The use of construction measures and the introduction of intelligent building control has reduced the energy consumption in the new building to about a third of the former energy consumption figure.
*The term passive house (Passivhaus in German) refers to a rigorous voluntary standard for energy efficiency in buildings. An integrated part of the architectural design process, passive design results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling.