Claudia Loiacono, Certified Passive House Designer at Fuse, talks about her visit to the world’s first passive house building in Darmstadt-Kranichstein (Germany) and how durability is an integral part of sustainability.

"In 2017, while training as Certified Passive House Designer in Darmstadt, Germany, I had the chance to visit the first passive house ever built: a residential block erected in 1991 in the Kranichstein district. The whole building is, to date, fully operational: it has so far passed a 31 years long "health-check" carried out via high precision monitoring devices. The external envelope includes a green roof, triple-pane low-e glazing windows, balcony doors with thermally broken frames, external wall insulation (EPS) and thermal bridge free balconies supported by an external steel structure. The four families that settled in October 1991 can nowadays still benefit not only from savings in energy bills but from excellent indoor air quality and thermal comfort."

https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/a-lesson-from-the-kranichstein-passive-house

Picture link https://phichina.com/node?page=1

Photo credit Peter Cook