Design, monitoring and evaluation of a low energy office building with passive cooling by night ventilation

In moderate climates, one promising feature to reduce the energy demand of office buildings for air conditioning without reducing comfort is passive cooling by night ventilation. An office building has been designed, realised and monitored for a long time period in the framework of the German research programme solar optimised buildings. The night cooling of the office building has been realised by natural ventilation. The unique possibility of stepwise realisation from design through the maintenance and the monitoring up to the optimisation is used to evaluate the contribution of simulation tools on the design of the buildings.