Winner of the 7th Active House Symposium – AONI de HAUS
On 16 and 17 October 2019 the Active House Alliance held its 7th symposium, where experts from all over the world interested in the sustainable construction exchanged ideas and best practices. This is the first time that this international event has come to North America.
During the event, the Active House Label Awards have been organized, where projects submitted to Active House have been evaluated and awarded in the different categories.
The project AONI de HAUS has been a winner of the PROJECTS WITHOUT RADAR BUILT CATEGORY, sharing the award together with the Sasso Nero mountain hut, a project from Italy.
The project has been the work of architects Xin Liao, Hui Sun, Yingchun Zhang, and Xing Zhao and has been developed by the Songyang Wofun Tourism Culture Development Co., Ltd.
The predecessor of AONI DE HAUS was an abandoned one-hundred-year-old vernacular dwelling built in the late Qing Dynasty, which covers an area of ca. 420 square meters. The courtyard house is located in the city of Lishui in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, with hot summers and cold winters.
AONI DE HAUS is the first certified energy retrofit project of a three-direction enclosed courtyard house built of wood and rammed earth with passive house components. After the retrofit, Old AONI DE HAUS has an excellent performance in moisture proof, air-tightness, as well as thermal and sound insulation. The courtyard house, which is retrofitted according to the EnerPHit of the Passive House Institute (PHI), is a demonstration project that appears in Chinese rural areas but exceeds the urban conventional buildings.
The retrofit project of AONI DE HAUS has quantified the potential of rammed earth wall and wood structure as well as courtyard spatial layout in building energy consumption, at the same time optimized the thermal performance of renewed construction practices in building envelope based on traditional construction technology. The annual heating energy consumption of AONI DE HAUS meets the EnerPHit Standard for certified energy retrofits with passive house components of the Passive House Institute (PHI).
The Jury Committee commented on awarding the award to AONI DE HAUS:
“A very delicate and interesting refurbishment in China that shows the values of such an old and important culture together with actual values of retrofit and renovation with energy strategies that provide new use and life to this beautiful courtyard.”
