Innovation and Transferability
The Sunlighthouse in Pressbaum near Vienna is the first co²-neutral single-family-house in Austria. It was completed end of 2010. The project was launched in 2009 by the Velux company as a part of their Pan European experiment, the so called “model home 2020” project. The goal is to develop, build and monitor a house as a prototype following the highest approach to progressive and sustainable building and living.
The challenge of the Austrian model home was to create a house that taps the full potential of the plot (like the wonderful views, exposure to the sunlight, maximum of privacy between the existing houses, …) on one hand and to develop an energy and ecology concept to erase the ecological footprint of the house within the next thirty years on the other hand. What distinguishes this project from many ambitious preceding projects is the need and wish to combine minimized numerical values for energy efficiency with ambitious architecture.
In the end the goal was accomplished. The Sunlighthouse will produce more energy than the transport, building and using (!) of the house consumes, which makes it a small “power station” and a beacon project for further conscious and sustainable planning and building.
