Energetic Renovations in Germany

Text: Zsuzsa Beliczay

Bauhaus, Dessau

Sustainable architecture is the greatest challenge the near future holds for designers and architects as soon as in the next few decades as the German government and the decree on energy-saving defines a reduction of primary energy-consumption by 80 % till 2050. This is an enormous task especially in the light of the fact that appr. two thirds of the 18.1 million homes in Germany are in need of energetical modernization and the annual ratio of modernized ones is only about 1%. The symposium of DETAIL taking place in summer 2014 was in search of solutions to this situation that might be substantive and innovative ones as well as of ways to have architectural standards recognized whilst keeping to the output prediction and to organically integrate social concerns and social background into the modernization scheme. BBSR, the federal research institute specialized in architecture, urban and settlement research cooperated in organizing this event.