Adapting the principles of Integrated Design to achieve high performance goals: Nearly Zero Energy Building in the European market

The building design phase is of particular importance. Integrated Design (ID) in general is a valuable approach to reduce the complexity of the design process and facilitates the interactions between the members of the design team. For the purpose of reaching high sustainability performance, the alternative building and technical solutions should be developed and discussed by an integrated, multidisciplinary team. It is not limited to energy efficiency and goes beyond this issue. However, ID is not a new notion or concept, but rather an enhancement of good practice as design processes are moving towards greater complexity. The relevance of the concept is based on the well-proven observation that changes and improvements of the design are relatively easy to make at the beginning of the design process, but become increasingly difficult and disruptive as the process unfolds. In this context early design phases offer an opportunity for large impact on performance to the lowest costs and disruption. Therefore, a shift of work load and enhancement to the early phases will probably pay off in the lifecycle of the building. Changes or improvements to a building design when foundations are being poured, or even contract documents are in the process of being prepared, are likely to be very costly and extremely disruptive to the process. Late attempts of improvements are also likely to result in only moderate gains in performance. The IEE project MaTrID – Market Transformation Towards Nearly Zero Energy Buildings Through Widespread Use of Integrated Energy Design – aims at supporting the implementation of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings by 2020 (http://www.integrateddesign.eu/). In order to accelerate the application of ID processes in European countries a clear step by step explanation about the ID approach is necessary. Hence, on the basis of generated knowledge form the project INTEND (http://www.intendesign.com/) we developed an ID Process Guide. The guide will be translated into national context of 11 European partner countries. Also a client and a tenant brief were prepared as well as supplements on scope of services and remuneration models. Furthermore, among European project partners about 20 Integrated Design pilot projects are accompanied and documented. Gathered know-how from those large scale tests will be disseminated and thus set best practice examples which can be easily multiplied. Within the framework of the project the GreenBuilding Integrated Design Award has been launched. ID processes in non-residential buildings from all over Europe are invited to apply annually. The benefit of EU collaboration is to cross-pollinate best practices among leading European countries. On this basis practical recommendations on possible policy instruments that may support the widespread use of Integrated Design on daily design practice.