'Kurpfalzschule' Primary School Heidelberg
ap88 architekten
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Status:
Realized
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Education type:
Municipal Education
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Education level:
Primary Education
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Address:
Schäferstrasse 18, 69124 Heidelberg
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Client:
Municipality of Heidelberg
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Keywords:
Low-energy building
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Programme:
sports hall, changing rooms, toilets, covered playground
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Area:
993m2
A passive sports hall as an extension of an existing primary school
In this project, an existing school was extended with a sports hall. The school site is limited, and it was therefore decided to partly dig the sports hall into the ground. The dressing rooms and sanitary facilities are below the playground so that no additional outdoor space was lost. By reducing the footprint of the sports hall, it was still possible to build it in this historically valuable area. The designer was able to incorporate the sports hall sensitively in the streetscape. Two large glass elevations along the street and by the playground link the outdoor space and the exercise hall. An overhang on the southern facade serves as a sunshield and at the same time creates a covered outdoor play space. The hall has a free height of 7 m and is spanned by two prefabricated pre-stressed concrete joists parallel to the street. As a result, the glass wall could be kept light and no load-bearing pillars were necessary in the façade.
During the design process, the idea arose to build this sports hall in accordance with the passive house standards, as one of the first in Germany. The location and orientation made it difficult to achieve the passive house standard. The southern façade is shaded by the main school building. The north-facing wall provides only limited passive solar gain, although daylight through the north wall is ideal for a sports hall because this light is not blinding. Therefore the feasibility was examined by the Passivhaus Institut. With an intelligent design it was possible to achieve the required level of heating requirements of 15 kWh/m2a, which proves that it is possible to build passive houses even in less ideal situation. In addition to the heating energy, the energy concept also comprises other energy-relevant aspects of a building, such as the use of daylight, the efficient control of artificial lighting, protection against overheating in summer, efficient ventilation and hot water supplies. Extremely efficient insulation without heat losses and extreme airtightness are crucial elements for the passive house concept. This requires careful construction details and precision work on the building site.
The far-reaching optimisation of the ventilation and an intelligent control technology also contribute to the necessary energy savings. In this project, the changing rooms and shower areas form one ventilation unit: air is blown into the changing rooms and extracted in the shower areas. This leads to a reduction of the energy requirements of the ventilators. Savings are also achieved with control technology. The ventilation is not controlled by an occupancy sensor or timer, but for the showers and changing rooms it is linked to the production of humidity and in the sports hall it is controlled by means of a CO2 sensor. In summer the hall is ventilated naturally with night cooling through ventilation openings in the north and south elevations.
A solar boiler has been installed on the roof for the hot water supply. The gently sloping roof is a green roof. This serves as a buffer against rainwater and at the same time also improves the thermal inertia of the structure. With this sports hall the city of Heidelberg achieved a pilot project and since then it has been fully committed to continuing its policy of improving energy standards for both renovation and new buildings.