Type of building: Detached single-family home
Purpose: Living
Year of construction: 1791
Year of renovation: 2020
Location: Dortmannhof, Essen, Germany
Built-up area: 350m2
Project lead: Sigurd Larsen Architekten
Combining historical value with modern comfort
The project renovated a historical building with a view to maintaining the historical features while adding comfort and reducing energy consumption.
The residential house in Dortmannhof was formerly an agricultural barn. Local regulations gave the historical building protected status and restricted any external modifications to the outside of the house. For this reason, the windows were added from the inside. Furthermore, to minimize changes energy upgrades were only made to the living areas.
The acoustics were important in this project; therefore, the design teams improved this aspect through space isolation or sectioning. The end result was a more comfortable, brighter and more energy-efficient historical building.
Dimensions
In order to comprehensively assess the health of the building in this case study, various dimensions were evaluated, each measured through specific indicators relevant to their respective domains. The following figure presents the ratings for each dimension, providing a visual summary of the building's overall health status.
Data insights for Germany
As this case study features both acoustic elements and social interactions, the case uses data related to the two indicators: Acoustics comfort and Social connections of the Improving mental and physical health dimension.
A comfortable noise level
Only data on households suffering from noise are collected across EU countries. This shows that noise is an issue for Germans highlighting the need for more acoustically comfortable spaces.
Social spaces
The indicator social connections was analysed as spending time with family and friends. This data has only been collected once in 2015. While this dataset again shows the limitations of data collection, it can be seen that contact with friends is important to most Europeans, including Germans. Projects such as Dortmannshof showcase how paying attention to creating spaces that allow for meaningful connections is possible.
