Active Energy Building

The exhibition on “falkeis2architects: active energy building” details the extensive research by the Austrian architects Anton Falkeis & Cornelia Falkeis-Senn, leading to a truly “active building”. The project successfully implements a building-integrated energy production system developed for this new type of building. PV tracking systems and PCM climate wings, part of a moving building envelope, harvest solar and interstellar radiation, producing solar power and controlling the building climate. The building also demonstrates its high adaptability to changing spatial requirements, achieved by an extremely effective load-bearing structure. The project demonstrates that innovation will be our best strategy in tackling major societal challenges, such as climate change, energy and resource scarcity.
The active energy building aims at delivering a contribution to the
improvement of urban living conditions and energy demands. It works as a networked structure managing a local cluster, and is a smart node interconnecting existing buildings; sharing information as well as energy surplus. Based on this sharing logic, technological innovation becomes the carrier of societal innovation, and the improvement in quality of life the result of an architectural endeavor. Thus, the active energy building becomes a prototype for a new urban and decentralized energy production system, providing a more democratic model of energy production as well as energy distribution.