An Endless Circular Approach: Team RoofKIT

Part 12 / 15 of the series "Solar architecture at its best – Excellent projects from the Architecture Award Building Integrated Solar Technology 2022 introduced briefly"

SDE 21-22 Team RoofKIT, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (Germany)

At Solar Decathlon Europe 2021/2022, the student teams were given the challenge of developing concepts for adding additional storeys to existing buildings in various urban districts and with realising a functional section as a one- or two-storey Housing Demonstration Unit (HDU).

The RoofKIT team from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology planned a rooftop extension to Café Ada in the Mirker district in Wuppertal. The PV system is arranged here on a gently sloping sawtooth roof surface in three equal-sized arrays, each with six portrait-format standard modules. In addition these will also be expanded to form “photovoltaicthermal
hybrid modules”, in which a heat exchanger will be installed on the back. Mounted flush with the roof edges above the water-carrying layer, the reddish-brown glass surface blends in with the colour of the copper roof.

As part of an ambitious overall concept that also addresses aspects such as recycling-oriented design, the handling of the PV roof also shows the coherent integration of standard modules in an urban context.

The project received an honorary mention by the jury in the „Student’s Award“ section of the “Architecture Award Building-Integrated Solar Technology 2022“.

Project partners
Architect: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
Institut Entwerfen und Bautechnik
Professur Nachhaltiges Bauen, Professur Bauphysik und Technischer Ausbau

Get an Overview of the series "Solar architecture at its best – Excellent projects from the Architecture Award Building Integrated Solar Technology 2022 introduced briefly“

About the Architecture Award Building Integrated Solar Technology

The “Architecture Award Building-Integrated Solar Technology“ was started in the year 2000 by the Solarenergieförderverein Bayern (Bavarian Association for the Promotion of Solar Energy) and held since then for the 9th time. The award is established as an international competition concerning the interface between architecture and solar energy. The prize honors exemplary contributions of planning and designing building-integrated solar systems.

In the last edition of the competition the jury singled out 15 projects from 121 entries, which we want to present in a series. The jury was unanimous in its positive assessment that even with very different building tasks, and in different environments, these projects show that photovoltaic modules and solar thermal collectors can be successfully integrated with equal ambition in terms of design and technology.

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