Selected Project – Passivhaus

Lippe Bad – Luenen, Germany

The world’s first Passivehaus certified swimming center. This project showcases how even traditionally energy-intensive buildings can conform to the intensive building standard and has become a break-through project for public green buildings saving about a dollar per visitor in energy costs.

The project designers chose to design the roof structure out of wood for its inherent sustainable characteristics. The challenge of using a Glulam roof structure in this project was the high amount of moisture and chlorine in the air. This required special detailing in the connections to prevent the erosion of the steel.
The roof structure consists of 51650 sqft of Glulam beams with pre-fabricated panel elements spanning between. The pre-fabricated elements are made up of Timber beams with insulation and acoustic panels sandwiched within and completely fabricated in the factory then shipped to the site. This allows for quality control and fast construction.