The building also has a large multi-function room that forms the heart of the school, and a school cafeteria. The school contains ten classrooms, five special-subject rooms and three group-work rooms.
The project in Quinto Vicentino consisted of the construction of a new building for the town primary school to be located beside the existing, free-standing sports hall. Behind the new building’s unprecedented rating and the title that goes with it is a holistic approach that rigorously strives for maximum sustainability in every detail, from the construction method, to the energy concept and building services, to the materials used.Ĭompliance with the strict school building regulations, and earthquake and fire safety were top of the priority list in the planning process for the Quinto Vicentino primary school in Italy. Taken as a whole, the three components make up the Polar Bear House – currently the most sustainable building in the world. Here, too, the overall degree of fulfilment (for existing buildings) was already an extraordinary 95.6 percent. The latter was completed in 2008 and itself awarded DGNB Platinum around ten years later. Strictly speaking, it is an extension (component C) of an already existing company building (components A+B). The building in question is located in Kirchheim unter Teck, Baden-Württemberg, and is the headquarters of the architectural firm that designed and built it: BANKWITZ beraten planen bauen (consult design build). The building’s score of 94.2 percent is the highest overall degree of compliance ever achieved by a new building certified by the DGNB. The prerequisite: both buildings had to be completed quickly by the move-in date of summer 2020. There was also great interest in the 16-storey high-rise tower that closes off the development on Europa-Allee to the west. Then, in 2017, an occupier was found in the form of Deutsche Bahn, who wanted to use the entire “Brick”, located in the eastern part of the property, as a closedblock development. On the site with the catchy name “Brick” and “Tower” in the Europaviertel in Frankfurt am Main, they had designed and developed – together with the owner and investor – flexible solutions in order to be able to react as broadly as possible to a future tenant, who was not initially available. The renowned Frankfurt office, Schmidt Ploecker Architects, was faced with precisely this challenge.
This requires a high degree of flexibility in design and execution, because the future building must reflect the widest possible range of conceivable uses. More and more buildings are being constructed without knowing who the future user will be.
Deutsche Bahn Brick and Tower, Frankfurt am Main