Kungsbrohuset is a landmark for green-oriented architecture worldwide

Sep 10, 2012 08:26 GMT  ·  By
Stockholm is presently home to one of the world's most energy efficient buildings
   Stockholm is presently home to one of the world's most energy efficient buildings

Unknown to many, Stockholm is presently home to one of the world's most energy-efficient buildings. This construction, which was only recently purchased by a Swedish insurance company, stands as proof that simple, yet well-thought solutions can yield major benefits as far as sustainability is concerned.

It is no news that most of the energy typically consumed by buildings goes into lighting up rooms and powering various systems.

Therefore, the people who designed the Kungsbrohuset had a button installed at the exit of each office, whose role is that of turning off both whatever lights were left on by people, and non-essential electrical systems.

Thus, nobody needs to waste precious time looking at each and every light bulb before leaving the office, and wasting energy is pretty much out of the question.

Oil Price further informs us that, in order to make sure the computers, servers and other machines in the building are efficiently cooled off without too much pressure being put on the energy system, the architects in charge of this project came up with a highly innovative solution.

More precisely, a lake nearby this building had one pipe submerged in it, and the water pumped out of it goes straight into the Kungsbrohuset's cooling system.

As well as this, warming up the building is done in an energy-efficient and green-oriented manner: the heat generated by passengers in the subway is collected with the help of state-of-the-art technologies and made to warm up offices to the desired temperatures.

Speaking on behalf of the team in charge of overseeing work on this project, Klas Johansson explained how, as far as he and his crew are concerned, the big surprise is not that this building turned out to be this energy-efficient, but that nobody came up with these ideas before them.

As he puts it, they are, “extremely surprised no one has done this before us, there is no logical reason why you wouldn't.”

Apparently, similar buildings are to soon be erected in various other parts of Sweden as well.