I suppose all of us are waiting impatiently for the summer school in Valencia. That is why I thought we can discuss more in details, what are we expecting from the projects, which are going to be made by students working in international multidisciplinary groups.

It is clear, that each group will work on one project, which was selected as the best in some of partner institution. Together sharing their different experience and knowledge in different fields (architecture, HVAC engineering, electrical engineering, etc.), they are going to improve these projects.

Multidisciplinary collaboration enables to implement integrated design approach – to consider building as a one system of different interacting components (Fig. 1) and to make them work in harmony rather than against each other.

As we all know and as it was already written by Judit Balint in this Blog, the recasted Directive on the energy performance of buildings requires Member States, “…following the leading example of the public sector, develop policies and take measures such as the setting of targets in order to stimulate the transformation of buildings that are refurbished into nearly zero-energy buildings.” (Article 9). Concluding – we should seek to refurbish our buildings into nearly zero-energy buildings.

There comes my proposition – lets set a goal to transform analyzed university building into nearly zero-energy building. This will be done by using integrated design.