RoofKIT - Circular Construction and Solar Energy Use in Practice at the Solar Decathlon Europe 21/22

he contribution of the RoofKIT team to the SDE 21/22 competition is the extension for an existing café in Wuppertal, Germany, to create new functions and living space for the building with simultaneous energetic upgrading. The energy concept targets all renewable resources available on and in the building for energy supply: mainly solar energy which is used via PVT collectors, as well as waste heat from ventilation and grey water which is recovered for pre-heating. As part of the competition, a demonstration unit will be built representing a small cut-out of the extension. An integral building and energy concept combines physical properties of the building with adapted building services technologies to achieve maximum indoor comfort – particularly considering possible overheating of the lightweight construction during summer – and minimum CO2 emissions. The latter extends to the whole lifecycle of the building unit and one of the major goals of the project is to realize an almost completely mono-fraction and circular building construction as a contribution to the urban mining concept.