On the 19-21 of April, 13 syn.ikia consortium partners will come together in Salzburg, the home of the Austrian Sustainable Plus Energy Neighbourhood (SPEN) pilot project. The meeting is important as the EU-funded project has passed its three years mark, meaning that the time for reflection on lessons learned and next steps came about once again.
The agenda is a full one, as workshops, presentations and site visits will happen over the three days. The first day will be organised around two workshops, meant to draw recommendations, do’s and don’ts when developing SPENs. For the first exercise, partners will have to play different stakeholder roles, end-users, investors, housing developers or policy-makers, and identify their needs and interests in the wide range of innovative technologies, services and processes developed within the syn.ikia project. The second activity will take the form of a discussion around the main drivers and challenges of adopting an Integrated Energy Design process, an important aspect that differentiates syn.ikia from other standard construction projects.
Two days will be dedicated to the monitoring and formal review of activities and tasks from all project focus levels to ensure an efficient and smooth project management and implementation. Two different site visits of the social housing stock from Salzburg, developed and managed by Heimat Österreich, will serve to identify more thoroughly the particularities of the Austrian housing system. When it comes to the application of sustainable plus-energy neighbourhoods in Europe, ‘The experiences from Austria were particularly interesting for the project partners, since the framework conditions in Austria for the implementation of such concepts are relatively favourable (keyword: renewable energy communities)’, representatives from Salzburger Institut for Spatial Planning and Housing have said.
The first stop for the visits will be at Stadtwerk Lehen, an apartment complex developed between 2004-2013. It contains an overall 287 subsidized rental apartments, with a large solar thermal heating system, and a micro-grid, being destined for mix-use, which also includes a city gallery, kindergarten, and social services.
Strubergasse will be the following stop. Between 2012-2018, 14 residential buildings were renovated, while 12 new ones were built. A total of about 600 units are available in this area. The works included Thermal renovation and micro-grid-connection, as well as the creation of a car-free interior area, community gardening and green roofs, as well as the implementation of an open space concept.
The stop at „Berchtesgadenerstraße“ district, part of the klimaaktiv Gold standard „GNICE“ project, partly funded by syn.ikia, will offer a great illustration of the SPEN technologies – passive (e.g. optimised insulated building envelope) and active systems (e.g. photovoltaic power plant) – and innovations (e.g. user behaviour assessment and optimisation). syn.ikia partners will be joined during this visit by the Austrian Federation of Limited-Profit Housing Associations (GBV), which is part of the European-level network of Housing Europe, taking advantage of this great opportunity of knowledge and experience sharing.
The visits will end with the Zero Carbon Refurbishment project, which took place between 2018-2021, and consisted of: the addition of 20 residential units, CO²-neutral refurbishment, and the installation of a façade insulation system made of cellulose. It Is also important to mention that it includes the first Mobility Point in Salzburg, together with bicycle parking qualities higher than the usual standard.
About syn.ikia
Syn.ikia is an EU-funded innovation project under the As a Horizon 2020 programme that aims to enable the development of sustainable plus energy neighbourhoods in different climates, contexts and markets in Europe. Over the course of the project, four real-life plus-energy demo neighbourhood projects tailored to four different climatic zones will be developed, analysed, optimized and monitored, demonstrating the functionality of the plus-energy neighbourhood concept for the rest of Europe.
The project will encourage community engagement and will empower user’s control facilitated by digital platforms and driven by high architectural & spatial qualities, housing affordability, improved quality of life, and environmental consciousness to inform and enable behavioural change.
More information about the project: www.synikia.eu
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