SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE APPLIED TO REPLICABLE PUBLIC ACCESS BUILDINGS – SARA, WWW.SARA-PROJECT.NET

SARA aims to construct sustainable, cost effective, high energy performance, publicaccesseco-buildings that are immediately replicable at large scale in many locations. Theobjective is to surpass the requirements of the European Directive on Energy Performancein Buildings demonstrating CO2 reductions of 30% with an overcost of no more than 5%compared to conventional public buildings in each country.The key aspects of the project are public-access, innovative yet cost effective andreplicable results, consideration of end users and an interdisciplinary team working onResearch and Technological Development (RTD) activities that have focussed on expertdesign advice and integration of simulation and BMS data to improve control of thebuildings and future simulations. The demonstration sites include integrated projectplanning, active and passive solar design, low energy construction, including sustainablematerials and components and including renewable energy technology and buildingenergy management systems. Dissemination and training activities are also key to theproject and are all visible and publicly available via the project web site.SARA initially involved the demonstration of 8 sustainable and replicable Public-accessbuildings in 7 EC Member States (Austria, France, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Spain and theUK) and 1 New Independent State (Uzbekistan). An important German research centre isalso involved. Of these eight, four new buildings are now complete (03/2008), the tworefurbishment projects are still in progress and two sites have withdrawn from the project.The project is near enough to its conclusion (31/5/08) for preliminary results andconclusions to be drawn. Other contributions to this symposium will offer details of certainRTD and training aspects of the SARA project. This presentation aims to complimentthese detailed contributions with an overall balance of results from the perspective ofproject management. It should be stressed that the overall result of the project is verypositive and, perhaps for this reason, some less positive results are shared here in orderto enable other organisations to learn from and build on the SARA experience in futureprojects.