over4 project

project description

Over4 is both literally and figuratively, a multidisciplinary Team of young professionals, students and professors in the fields of architecture, design and civil engineering. The Team developed a renovation project of the 5 storey condominiums built during the communist era in most cities of Romania. Integrating eco-passive building principles and sustainable development, they propose a holistic renovation concept through which these blocks can reach NZEB standards, according to EUs development strategies for 2030.
The Over4 prototype represents one module from the rooftop which is a solar eco-passive house that could be built as a self-standing house and as part of a passive rooftop. Their concept presents a set of good practices on how to design and build ‘smart’: energy efficient, comfortable, sustainable and financially accessible.

key features

• The Over4 prototype is designed and built as an eco-passive house, by following the 5 principles of Passive House standards: proper thermal insulation, passive glazing, reduced thermal bridges, very good air tightness and an adequate heat recovery ventilation unit. As a result, it is very efficient and comfortable.
• Transformable interior spaces, our prototype can easily transform from a comfortable home into a co-working space, a fashion show, an art gallery, or a common meeting space for its inhabitants.
• The northern and southern terraces attached to the module offer a common place for gathering people to socialize and relax, while being used both as storage space (North) and integrated Building Integrated Photovoltaics shading (South).

applied innovative technologies

• Hybrid structure made of glulam frames with OSB panels with mineral wool as insulation is a simple but very efficient constructive system in terms of energy efficiency and modularity. The technical module incorporates the technical room, the kitchen, one bathroom and the windfang, a single modular piece of item which saves a lot of time for transportation and assembly.
• The heat recovery ventilation unit recovers not only the heat from the polluted air exhausted from the indoor space (odors, CO2, VOC, radon), but also recovers the humidity. Thus, the heat recovery system presents a higher efficiency and a lower energy consumption for the heating/ cooling load. The efficiency of heat recovery is up to 84%, while the humidity recovery is up to 90%.
• The photovoltaic system (including the PV panels on the Southern terrace - BIPV) produces twice as much energy that the house consumes, the rest of it being injected into the network leading to financial benefits.
• As innovative materials we use Romanian sheep wool which is considered a total waste by the E.U. It is wrapped into a fabric capable of letting air vapor come into contact with the wool which is applied directly to the structure of the ladder rail, thus, the wool fulfills a double role – acoustic and air filtering inside the open-space design.