Learning From Hotels
2019/20
A hotel is a microcosm that provides everything guests need during their stay. The hotel room can be consid- ered as a temporary minimal apartment in which all basic needs are met in a very small space: a bed to sleep, a table for work, storage space for luggage, TV, internet and telephone for contact with the outside world, tea kitchen and minibar for snacks in between and sanitary facilities for personal hygiene. Thanks to complementary offers such as catering, laundry, fit- ness centre, wellness areas or conference and meet- ing rooms, the hotel guest does not necessarily have to leave the hotel during his entire stay.
The hotel room is the key element to the overall build- ing. It occupies most of the total building area and is responsible for most of the total energy demand. This makes it an ideal study object for learning the core topics of the Institute for Buildings and Energy. On the basis of the hotel room, the interactions between out- door climate, building envelope, building technology, user behaviour, indoor climate and energy consump- tion can be studied, investigated, understood and op- timized in an iterative process. The façade, as an inter- face between indoor and outdoor climate, occupies a core position in this process and will be intensively worked on accordingly.
In contrast to residential buildings, only occupied ho- tel rooms are conditioned in hotel buildings for cost and energy savings. Also, there are very divergent ex- pectations of the users regarding the indoor climate: in the hotel people from different countries of origin and cultures with different expectations on thermal comfort live door to door for a limited time. Building envelope and building technology must be adapted to these special requirements.
As part of the Master Studio, the application of dy- namic simulation software is learned. Due to the simple geometry of the hotel room, a corresponding simulation model in dynamic be created in the and investigated with comparatively little effort. The re- petitive structure of a typical hotel building, with the hotel room as a basic element, allows to draw conclu- sions about the energy performance of the entire ho- tel building by extrapolating the results. The results of the simulations and the resulting insights provide valuable feedback for the design process.
In the design process, interactions between guest ar- eas and complementary areas of a hotel (fitness, pool, wellness, conference rooms, restaurant, bar etc.) are considered and possible synergies explored, aiming at the following questions: Can the configuration of a hotel room and the hotel building be rethought? Does the consideration of the hotel as a city in the city (liv- ing, working, leisure, gastronomy) open new perspec- tives, perspectives and potentials for the design of sustainable energy-efficient sustainable buildings and cities for the 21st century?
By examining four different locations - Dubai, London, Rio de Janeiro and Toronto - with their very different climatic conditions, the influence of the outdoor cli- mate on the design and optimal configuration of the building envelope and building technology will also be studied. Ultimately, by considering the specific us- age-related requirements and the climatic parameters of the respective location and by optimizing the shape of the building, the shell of the building, the building technology and the energy supply, sustainable, ener- gy-efficient building designs are to be created.