Passive houses for active students – Providing knowledge about eco-efficient buildings

Abstract

The OeAD-Housing Office is a non-profit organisation in the area of international cooperation in education, science and research in Austria. We cooperate with our parent company OeAD-GmbH as well as various Austrian student residences and partner universities worldwide. The main responsibility is accommodating international and national students in Austria’s university towns. Our success story started with the construction of the first halls of residence built according to the passive house standards world-wide in Vienna in 2005. Since its completion, the OeAD-Guesthouse Molkereistraße has accommodated 280 international students and guest professors per semester. We are successful in managing a total of 8 student guesthouses in the passive house design constructed in Vienna, Graz and Leoben.This paper describes the benefits of passive houses and raising awareness for eco-efficient buildings. We focus on two OeAD-Guesthouses in Austria and highlight their design, architecture and what it is like to live in both of them. Upon request we are also able to propose the OeAD-Guesthouse PopUp dorms. As we want to share our knowledge with the rest of the world we initiated 2 summer universities which pay attention to ecological buildings and the financial and economic system. We also draw attention to several awards we have won during the past years.