The Critical Design Process: Experiences from some of the first Passive Houses in Denmark

The “Comfort Houses” project is the most ambitious building project for passive, single-family houses even undertaken in Denmark. Thus far, different consortiums have designed and built 10 houses. Besides fulfilling the German passive-house standard, the goal of the project was to build the houses within Danish tradition of architecture and construction. The objective of the research presented in this paper, is to compare the different design processes behind the making of passive houses in a Danish context. We evaluated the process with regard to the integrated and traditional design process. Data analysis showed that the majority of the consortiums worked in an integrated manner; though there was room for improvment. Additionally, the paper discusses the challanges of implementing the integrated design process in practice and suggests ways of overcomming some of the barriers . In doing so, we also provide suggestions for future work with low-energy houses.