Project Partners:

Technical Universities of Berlin, Braunschweig and Munich

Rathgen Research Laboratory of the National Museums of Berlin

Project Description:

The Assessment System for Sustainable Building (BNB) of the Federal Building Ministry is to be analyzed and its application expanded to include cultural heritage buildings (memory institutions - MI), for example, museums, archives, libraries and depositories.

In times of energy shortages and increasing energy costs, MI are faced with huge additional expenses related to construction and operation. The steadily worsening climate crisis also raises questions about the appropriateness of their operation, renovation of existing buildings and potential new construction.

What is unique to museums, libraries, archives and depositories is the interaction between objects, buildings, visitors and other users. The subject of sustainability must therefore become a central and fundamental criteria for all future planning and construction processes. Museums and collection institutions have to reduce their relatively high carbon footprint to counteract the effects of the global climatic crisis. For example, the design of room air conditioning and climate controlled rooms currently follows the narrow guidelines of what is technically possible rather than what is necessary from the aspect of conservation, with far-reaching climate-damaging consequences.

The new planning approach to be developed in this project requires a reassessment of preventive conservation based on comprehensive risk management. The technical basis for this approach is through the analysis of building-related elements such as digital models (Building Information Modeling - BIM), thermal-dynamic simulations and direct monitoring by sensors on the building. Optimization then follows, for example, by adapting the models to the sensor data. This will mark the necessary transition from a protocol-driven to a process-driven decision-making culture that needs to be incorporated into the BNB system for MI.

The two-year research project therefore focuses on the analysis of four core themes for the BNB:

• Appropriate protection requirements for objects, collections and buildings
• Appropriate building technology systems
• Recommendation for suitable sensor technologies and monitoring systems for a building model (digital twin)
• Design of a BNB module for MI

The project coordinator is Prof. Dr. Stefan Simon, Director of the Rathgen Research Laboratory of the National Museums of Berlin.

The consortium partners are Prof. Eike Roswag-Klinge (Technical University of Berlin - Natural Building Lab, Field of Constructive Design and Climate Adaptive Architecture), Prof. Elisabeth Endres (Technical University of Braunschweig - IInstitute for Building Climatology and Energy of Architecture) and Prof. Dr. -Ing. habil. Christian U. Grosse (Technical University of Munich, Chair of Non-Destructive Testing, Department of Materials Engineering). The creation of a BNB system variant for MI (existing and new buildings) will be of great benefit to other operators of comparable MI from all levels of government.

Project start: 01.11.2022

Duration: 2022-2024

Funding: Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building through the Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR)

TUM Contact: Prof. Dr. Christian U. Grosse, Dr. Olga Popovych

For questions on the project, please contact the project coordinator at the Rathgen research laboratory: rf(at)smb.spk-berlin.de.