Innovative School Revitalization into Smart, Secure, Sustainable, Energy&Carbon Positive Building
Unique inclusive revitalisation of Prague’s High School into smart, safe, sustainable, operationally energy and carbon positive building focused on life cycle pillars of sustainability: environmental, socio-cultural and economic-organisational and received the highest SBToolCZ certificate. Innovative and standard technologies created complex living lab providing both mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Published operation data serves for optimization and not only for students‘ projects.
National
Czechia
City of Prague
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
Yes
ERDF : European Regional Development Fund
Operational Programme Prague – Growth Pole of the Czech Republic
PRIORITY AXIS 2 - - Sustainable mobility and energy savings
Call - Transformation of energy-intensive city buildings into near zero-energy buildings
In the programming period 2014-2020, Prague has a unique opportunity to obtain money for the development of the necessary areas from the European structural and investment funds (ESI) thanks to its own multi-fund Operational Programme Prague – Growth Pole of the Czech Republic (OP PGP). There is a sum of 201 590 104 EUR available in two funds.
One is the European Social Fund (ESF), which invests in people, focusing on the improvement of employment and training opportunities, and also trying to help people who are disadvantaged for any reason, whether due to physical or mental disability, or because of the social conditions in which they grew up and live.
The second is the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Its aim is to ensure that the economic and social disparities among the individual areas diminish. Out of all funds it has the largest amount of money that can be invested in manufacturing, transport, education, construction of social and health centres. This fund should contribute to creating new jobs, improving transport accessibility and to an overall increase in living standards.
As the City of Prague is a more developed region, the European Commission has set a condition for it of 50% co-financing of the EU sources, therefore another EUR 201 590 104, paid from the national sources, must be added to that amount. Those include public resources (sources from the City of Prague budget) and private sources (funding invested into projects by the grant beneficiaries).
Funding earmarked for the Prague operational programme is divided into 4 areas, so called priority axes: the Prague operational programme is divided into 4 areas, so called priority axes.
No
Yes
2022-06-30
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): ECOTEN s.r.o. Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Jiri Last name of representative: Tencar Gender: Male Nationality: Czechia Function: CEO Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Lublanska 1002/9 Town: Prague Postal code: 12000 Country: Czechia Direct Tel:+420 736 630 021 E-mail:tencar@ecoten.cz Website:http://www.ecoten.cz
It is a exemplary innovative, smart, sustainable, inclusive and beautiful pilot financially competitive refurbishment of school building tackling global challenges with local solutions transferable to similar construction types, any school building and ulitimately transferable to any typology reaching 21.Century standards. This complex revitalization is the first such example in Czech Republic which will provide a guidlines to any interested stakeholders to replicate right solutions and passways
Innovative
Smart
Sustainable
Inclusive
21st Century Architecture
Environment
-Innovative wooden curtain wall facade ENVILOP as an outcome of Czech applied research at CTU in Prague was used for the first time
-The envelope of the building complies with passive house standards
-Geothermal heat pumps (heating, cooling and hot water), 147 kWp PVs; 300 kWh battery
-Operationally Energy and Carbon Positive
-Innovative Predictive Control System: One day ahead prediction of the building's energy consumption, PVs production and spot electricity prices. The main priority was energy self-sufficiency, then spot electricity prices and then price of battery discharge. All regulation and control systems were in read-only version publicly available including all saved data.
-The grey water from showers and washbasins was cleaned and used for flushing toilets.
-Rain water was accumulated and used for irrigation
-The building had an extensive green roof, vertical greenery even on the two glazed facades providing comfortable diffuse light
User comfort
-Forced ventilation with heat recovery and regenerative heat exchangers controlled by CO2&VOC sensors
-Automatic microclimate control depending on the school schedule, the presence of people and could be partially controlled manually
-Ventilation, heating and cooling stops with opened window
-The lights are controlled by the level of daylight contribution in order to maintain 500 lux at the desk. Automatically controlled blinds. Lights and blinds could be also controlled manualy
Economy and management
-The Life Cycle Cost calculations as decision tool
-The full set of as-built documentation including operational manuals
-All significant energy consumption appliances and nods are measured and operated
-The waste chains were built from classrooms upto central collection place
-All requested stakeholders were involved in project (client, architect, general designer, oponent, representative of the school – staff, teachers and students, facility manager, SBToolCZ expert)
-The building is like a living organism it ages as humas age – siberian larch wall cladding ages unevenly while horizontal and vertical greenery is taking over
-Designing a sensible layout into the existing building that respected the specific requirements
-School premises have been given a versatility that allows the institution to adapt to the future requirements of modern education
-The entire spatial concept is based on transparency, which is a priority for public institutions. Significantly glazed façade system developed at the Centre for Energy Efficient Buildings of the CTU, as well as the use of glazed partitions, doorlights and skylights in the interior, respond to this fact
-The fresh open style of the building is enhanced by views into the surrounding greenery and the new outdoor living atrium, which lies at the heart of the layout and into which both the building's main circulation and some teaching spaces face
-In addition, the entrance floor offers a direct connection to the atrium from the lobby, as well as the school cafeteria and the student coffee bar. Large fabric shade sails provide shade during the summer months, and mature trees will offer shade in the future. The atrium further transitions into various outdoor spaces used for both alternative outdoor learning and active student recreation.
-The interior of the building has been designed with an artistic touch and the colours have not been forgotten.
-Operation of the building is smart autonomous allowing remote access monitoring and operating.
-The architectural concept of the interior visually facilitates orientation in the building. The individual typologically significant layout units are distinguished by colour. From the neutrally designed entrance and circulation areas, the warm yellow classrooms, the dark blue teachers‘ rooms are easily identifiable
-The typology of the units is addressed not only by dominant colours, but by colour accents in the form of details such as niches in the predominantly white furniture, coloured notice boards, acoustic panels and structural cladding. The office desks are neutral white. Upholstered furniture in neutral grey tones. School desks and chairs are a combination of oak veneer and matte black locksmith construction.
-Details in the form of locks, small accessories and handrails are also chosen in contrasting black.
-An important element facilitating orientation in the building is the clear information and orientation system developed by the graphic designer for this building.
-The building and its immediate surroundings thus work in a pleasant symbiosis that aims to positively motivate regular users and visitors.
-The whole building serves as a teaching tool, i.e. Living Lab for students and other professionals.
-The barrier-free design of the entire refurbished complex was realized
-The inner space are complemented with outdoor class room, outdoor gym, outdoor table tennis and chess-table, outdoor seating linked to dining hall and bike stands with e-bike charger, set of tools and bicykle pump.
-The original stone statue was preserved and newly located.
-Teachers and students are provided with high quality motivating education environment.
-The experience from excursions of various groups showed the positive efects on the will to push for replication in their neighbourhoods. For example Municipality of Prague 6 requested to use SBToolCZ methodology to create assignment for design of a new school with a view of reaching similar standard to Českobrodská school.
-The locality is still underdeveloped however the school building as two surrounding buildings were refurbished and aesthetically improved the locality for the benefit of citizens.
-Thorough consultations with staff and teachers formed the building programme.
-Initial „distrust“ from high level officials of Municipality of Prague was overcomed and turned to being proud of having such a type of building in their portfolio.
-European Funds Department of City of Prague was consulted with various ideas mainly regarding the eligibility of the costs
-Oponent of the project brought many constructive critique and project was optimized.
-Feedback from visitors of the construstion site were valuable in several decisions.
-The Czech legislative regulations caused lots of burdens which had to be overcomed with great experience of several professionals mainly regarding the innovative wooden curtain facade ENVILOP
-The energy manager has helped to optimize building operation together with general contractor after studends started their academic year.
- This project was extremely complex and involving many professions. At the beginning of the desing stage, the full team meetings led to many technology optimizations and polishing the functionalities, i.e. expected functionalities were confronted and optimized with realistic options.
- The oponent’s work focused to many technical and financial optimizations which led to retriving highly financially competitive design.
- Including innovative ENVILOP – facade solution led to many on site issues which had to be solved operatively by design team and facade and general contractor.
- Similar situations on the site in smaller scale than described above were on every day bases as it was complex revitalization of the building from 1970’s.
-The project brought a first complex solution built in the Czech Republic. It was intended as a pilot project and has served as a living lab with focus on life-cycle analysis. The availability of highly detailed data as the complete operational costs will serve for analysis of effectivity of particular solutions and „cook book“ for the following building designs
-The practical impact appeared in the request of local municipality of Praha 6 for creating the tender document for architectural study and following stages of the project documentation for schools to reach similar standard as Ceskobrodska, ensuring the project preparation control mechanisms and life-cycle thinking.
-Mayors of several villages were inspired and started the process of revitalizations municipal buildings in the style of Ceskobrodska, for example village Klopina.
-The school as a institution receives direct benefits in form of high quality, motivating and stimulating teaching facility, inspirational model project for students and their projects.
-The City of Prague received direct benefits in form of sucessfull project and model for next revitalizations.
-For all involved parties the indirect benificiaries the project brought very strong reference which can be appreciated by new customers.
-The uniqueness of the Operational Programme was within the scope of eligible costs. At the time of OP creation (2012) the subsidies focused only on energy saving mainly at the improvement the envelope and heating source. In the years to come, other interventions were adopted. The OP had among the eligible costs: interventions tackling energy savings, RES, acoustic and visual comfort, quality of internal microclimate, greenery, grey and rain water management, construction modifications which allowed to design in the project many „science fiction“ features which became generally partly standard during the course of project implementation howerver few stayed innovative even after 6 years as the complexness of the project, prediction control system and wooden curtain facade ENVILOP developing circular construction industry.
-The building already complies with new EU taxonomy DNSH and EPBD 4 „zero emissions buildings“ as a part of Fit for 55 package within the European Union’s Green Deal initiative
-The design closely followed SBToolCZ methodology with the goal to reach highest-golden certificate.
-Along the certification the goal was set to reach operationally energy and carbon positive building and lower as possible the embodied energy and carbon emissions.
-The unique approach was in optimization of the project in every phase and high dedication of people involved in the project.
-Base of success during the construction phase lied in communication of three main persons: Project Design Manager, Overseeing Engineer and Contractor and their everyday „fight“ for many items in the building.
-As was mentioned above the followed SBToolCZ methodology is easy to replicate to other projects, only the mind set and will of public developers and employers has to be transformed with use existing best practice: Revitalization of Ceskobrodska school.
-The whole concept of complex solution is replicable as it fulfils the EU taxonomy DNSH and EPBD IV „the emission zero buildings“.
-Publishing recorded and analysed operation data will support data driven decision making and thus the most suitable elements will be replicated.
The project is the best practice example of think globaly and act localy. It complies with the newest EU taxonmy, Green Deal Intiative, New European Bauhaus, circular economy and life-cycle thinking. The solution responds to local issues with buildings with curtain facades built mainly in 1970’s and 1980‘ often full with azbestos. The green roofs, green facades and maximalization of natural surfaces support the local biodiversity. It plays a model role in tender preparation, designing and building/revitalizing schools in Prague, in other places in the Czech Republic and due to European publicity also in other European counties.
