Sustainable Housing Renewal

Following the already proved models the sustainable planning culture is endangering several methods directed towards the needs of tenants in the existing post-war housing stock. The case-study of our project is the renewal of the multi stored building in the housing estate Metalna, Maribor/Tezno (1949). It is based on the sustainable renovation principle for the quality of sustainable housing in functional, technological and environmental point of view. According to it, the idea of the project was to improve the functionality of the building as well as of individual housing units. One of the main goals was to introduce the variety of space and typology of individual housing units. Beside, there was an intention to rebuild and redesign the green area, especially the problems of parking and playground for children. On the other hand, the project is introducing the low-energy renovation principle including new technologies, structural elements and materials. Two scenarios of technological renewal were suggested. The first one was a classical one using additional thermal insulation of the building envelope and fitting of new structural elements such as windows, doors, balconies, windbreaks etc. (Renewal 1). The second scenario, however, included the sunspace construction used as a new passive solar structural element, modifying the envelope (Renewal 2). The energy efficiency of the suggested scenarios were calculated according to the procedures given in EN 832 standard considering the attached sunspace as integral part of the building in first case and as a passive solar object adjacent to the thermal envelope of the building in the second case. The results show that the last case yields the most energy efficient renewal of the existing residential building.