We spend an ever-increasing part of our lives in buildings, for living, work and leisure. Buildings should therefore be characterized by a healthy as well as pleasant indoor climate, convincing light conditions, fresh air and good acoustics. Designing a building also means designing these qualities, which cannot be seen at first glance but can only be experienced.

 

To ensure that these diverse demands can be met properly in the future, we teach and conduct research in the fields of building climate control, building physics and technical building equipment in the context of an economical use of natural resources. We concentrate on buildings that already have the properties required to achieve contemporary thermal, hygienic, visual and acoustic properties on the basis of their design, construction and building physics. Building in the existing fabric through refurbishment, additions and conversion is increasingly coming to the fore. Energy-efficient supply technology based on renewable energies is becoming the key to achieving climate neutrality for a building, a neighborhood, a city or an entire region.

 

The Chair of Building Physics & Technical Services in the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering has been headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Karsten Voss since 2003 and is made up of ten members of staff from various disciplines. The teaching offers address the courses of study in architecture and civil engineering as well as postgraduate master courses. Under the title "Sustainable Construction and Building Performance", the teaching offers form essential parts of a focus in the master's program in architecture as well as in the research profile of the faculty. The research projects of the department address the interface between architecture, building physics and building technology. This concerns experimental work in the field of performance monitoring of buildings and technical systems as well as the use of complex simulation programs for performance evaluation and optimization. We work in a national and international network of researchers. Numerous scientific publications have been produced in this sphere.