Workshops in Dutch sustainable building design practice

Within the present context of the Dutch Sustainable Building Practice it is hard for the different involved building design disciplines to give a good answer to sustainability. Especially this is the case for the application solar energy either in passive or active form. As traditional methods did not work out adequately a new approach within the building industry is proposed: Integral Design, a "thinking in levels" approach based on the use Morphological charts. Since year 2001 'integral approach' has been propagated within Dutch building design practice, through continuously developing 'learning by doing' workshops by the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects (BNA) and Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. The workshops renewable energy for multidisciplinary professional design-teams gave some interesting and valuable recommendations and conclusions. Some designs will be presented in the final paper. The workshops became part of the permanent professional educational program for BNA since 2006, in which some 200 professionals already participated. This research was part of the Knowledge Centre Building & Systems (KCBS), in which Eindhoven University of Technology and TNO Environment and Geosciences cooperate. The use of solar energy was stimulated by an Integral design approach for architects which is being tought in workshops for professionals. This lead to more generated possible solutions in the conceptual phase of the design process, thus increasing the application of solar energy. Copyright © (2009) by the International Solar Energy Society