Solar Settlement and Sun Ship, Freiburg, Germany

Technical Information:

Project: Sun Ship - Schlierberg Solar Settlement (Retail, commercial and residential spaces)

Year: 2000 Solar Settlement / 2010 Sun Ship

Area: 11.000 m2

Budget: € 13.300.000

Location: Freiburg, Germany

Architect: Rolf Disch – Solar Architecture

Located in the Freiburg, southern Germany for retail, commercial and residential usage. The Sun Ship earned several prizes and awards for its architecture, aesthetics and economic innovation.

With sixty individually designed PlusEnergy homes, the Freiburg Solar Settlement is said to be, Europe‘s most modern residential development project. PlusEnergy building also gains a new dimension from the Sun Ship, which fits optimally with the concept of the Solar Settlement.

The Solar Settlement is an ensemble of multistory townhomes and a commercial building, the Sun Ship. The 59 homes are divided among 11,000 m², 9 of which are penthouses on the Sun Ship roof. The single homes range from 75 to 162 m², all the homes together with over 7,850 m² of floor space. All of them are PlusEnergy homes, which produce more energy than they consume and whose supplementary income heavily outweighs the low additional costs. 

All of the houses are wooden and built only with healthy building materials, all with large photovoltaic roofs as well. The color concept was developed by a Berlin artist, Erich Wiesner. The premises remain vehicles-free thanks to the parking garage underneath the Sun Ship and the well organized car-sharing system.

The Solar Settlement generates 420,000 kWh of solar energy from a total photovoltaic output of about 445 kW peak per year. If one calculates the energy savings from the optimal efficiency, here annually 200,000 liters of oil and 500 tons of CO₂ are saved. For the first time worldwide, even until today, PlusEnergy was implemented as a community in Freiburg – receiving heavy worldwide response and exciting awards.

For the undertaking, financing and marketing of this PlusEnergy pilot-project a building development company was founded. A portion of the marketing was completed through four Freiburg Solar Funds, corporate real estate funds and simultaneously an ethical-ecological financial investment.

The Sun Ship is the service center for the Solar Settlement in Freiburg – and the first commercial PlusEnergy building. It extends itself over 125 meters along a main road and functions as a sound barrier for the housing community on its opposite side. The Sun Ship is 3 stories, with a northern front section that is 5 stories. Embedded in roof garden landscaping, 9 exclusive, 3 level penthouses were constructed. In 2 underground floors you will find storage rooms and a parking garage with 138 parking spaces.

The north front end of the Sun Ship is home to the renowned Ökoinstitut e.V. (EcoInstitute).

On the ground floor of the main building there are large sales spaces totaling 1,200 m2, used by an eco-supermarket, a pharmacy/convenience store and a coffee shop. In the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th floors you will find offices, studios, clinical practices and 2 conference rooms.. The entire office space of the Sun Ship aggregates to 3,600 m2. On its roof there are 9 penthouses.

The supporting structure is made from reinforced concrete, however the energy optimized façade is wooden. In a post-beam construction the special triple-paned windows and vacuum insulation panels are fit into place. In addition to the large scale PV modules, the structural measurements are essential for the maximum energy efficiency. 

The implemented concept here is relatively easy to adapt for commercial and other building types all over Germany and the rest of the world and it can be built, used and marketed profitably. Significant costs are saved because of an annual primary energy savings of about 1 million kWh.

The refinancing of the project was achieved through 2 private real estate funds, which were marketed as ethical-ecological financial investments. An exemplary sustainable development project, which secured 13.3 million Euros in total – as private investments, and to a large extent, as capital asset for common interest trusts. Citizen’s financial shareholding as the broad foundation was an integral part of the concept: with a building like the Sun Ship capital can be redirected into environmentally friendly sectors of the economy. 

The Sun Ship offers infrastructure for a city catchment area of about 25,000 people. To a considerable extent many of the businesses who settled in the building cater towards the sustainability industry, and thus it became an important ecological and economic pulse transmission for the region and beyond. 

It is the first positive energy office building worldwide. The office spaces are flanked on both the East and West sides entirely with windows, which maximizes natural lighting and employee views while it minimizes the energy used for artificial lighting.

Sources:

http://www.rolfdisch.de/index.php?p=home&pid=78&L=1&host=2#a564

http://plusenergiehaus.de/index.php?p=home&pid=10&L=1&host=1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ship_(building)http://www.buildinggreen.com/hpb/mtxview.cfm?CFID=42848283&CFTOKEN=84801276