Compact courtyard housing for sustainable urban areas - Typology and redesign of courtyard houses with low-energy or plus-energy standard

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Jan Cremers
• Subject Area: Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology ; City Planning, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: from 2016 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 329318712

Englische Zusammenfassung The research project focuses on the redesign of the courtyard house type for sustainable urban areas with high density. Despite a tradition of thousands of years with a huge diversity in many regions of the world, the building type has not attracted adequate attention and development in the last decades compared to "extroverted" building types. With regard to sustainable urban solutions it is not sufficient to improve the technical performance of existing building typologies. In addition, we have to invent new building types connected to specific urban pattern and solutions. Using up to date technology the intended project shall lead to principle solutions of so called "Compact Courtyard Houses" which stand for high privacy, high density and the very efficient use of resources such as material, energy and land use. The concept can provide affordable and individual housing on very small plots (< 80 square meters) with high spacial qualities and personal secluded indoor and outdoor areas, not only for families but also for other house sharing concepts. In regard to many aspects such as natural ventilation, use of daylight, fire security, construction issues, utilisation of renewable sources, demands for suitable building codes etc. the "compact" courtyard house requires different and innovative solutions. To achieve the goal, interdisciplinary and systematic research is needed to develop and to optimise the new building type. The complex process cannot be pursuit as a common design task under conventional economic conditions. Therefore it needs public funding. The attached application focuses on the second stage (two years) to continue working on the typology, urban concepts, technical solutions and reliable figures of the performance. Topics will be as following:- Optimizing the energy and comfort aspects for the single units.- In-depth understanding of the micro-climate performance of the courtyards.- Finding an appropriate proportion of the use of renewable materials for construction, such as timber, also with regard to life-cycle assessment, sound protection and economic criteria.- Analysing the building technologies and processes for site logistics, construction, maintenance and end-of-life-scenarios.Further steps with industry partners and communities shall lead to prototypes preferably on an urban scale. Monitoring of the real performance and user interviews shall complete the whole project in the future.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants