New construction City hall Reutlingen | Germany

A new Stadthalle, or municipal center, has been built in the city of Reutlingen. The new structure, a multi-purpose cultural-event center that seats 1,500 people, took four years to plan and build, and was completed at the end of 2012. It was designed by the architectural office of Max Dudler, in keeping with a basic form that recalls ancient temples.  ZWP Ingenieur-AG carried out the detailed planning for all of its technical building services.

The systems and design parameters for the center were chosen via a comprehensive analysis and coordination process. A broad range of different types of uses had to be taken into account, including concerts and lectures, plays, trade fairs and exhibitions, conferences, dance events and banquets. In addition, all choices had to support operational-efficiency criteria, i.e. "greenness" and economic efficiency – and yet stay within a tight budget.
The key planning aims for ZWP Ingenieur-AG thus included providing all functionalities for the versatile-use concept, minimizing final energy consumption (via a special integrated planning concept) and minimizing primary energy consumption (with significant improvements on the standards required under the German Energy Saving Ordinance (EnEV) of 2007).

During preliminary planning, different types of heating and cooling options were compared in terms of their required investment costs and their primary energy requirements. Among the heating options considered, connection to the district heating network of FairEnergie GmbH proved to offer the best combination of low cost and low emissions, along with a primary energy factor of only 0.65.

As to cooling for ventilation systems, a total of 70 % of the required cooling is achieved by evaporative cooling within the systems themselves; only 30 % is provided via integrated vapor-compression refrigeration machines. This arrangement saves about 70 % of the emissions incurred with conventional cooling systems.

Central ventilation and air conditioning systems, with a total air-throughput rate of about 148,000 m³/h, provide a pleasant and safe indoor climate in the facility's main hall, chamber music hall and entrance areas. The air-intake rate is regulated, via volume flow control, in keeping with the numbers of persons present in the facility. The system is especially economical in that only stale air is exchanged in the process.

Images: © Ralph Richter