Experiences from the Design Processes of the First "Comfort Houses" in Denmark

The "Comfort Houses" is the most ambitious building project in passive houses in Denmark until today. Eight single family houses are built and designed by seven different consortiums. Besides fulfilling the German passive house standard the goal was to build the houses according to Danish tradition of architecture and construction. The objective of this research was to clarify the different design processes according to method, tool and teamwork. The processes are evaluated according to the "Integrated Design Process" and the "Traditional Design Process" and show very different take-offs. Analysing the data we can see that: All consortiums agree that it is necessary to work as a team from the early stages of the design process. There is a tendency in all processes that they are not using the tool that are available to document some of the parameters of indoor environment. According to the architectural qualities some of them are often cut back in the process primarily because of cost savings.