OUR STATEMENT.

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology is participating in the 2021/22 Solar Decathlon Competition in Wuppertal, Germany with its project RoofKIT. Designed as a top-up to an existing structure of the 19th century in the old city fabric, it demonstrates a vision for the building industry: social adequate, energy positive and circular sustainable.

Architecture, next to its traditional understanding of beauty, solidity and utility, has in addition an immense responsibility towards society at large and its immediate and greater environment. The project RoofKIT as part of the Solar Decathlon competition 2021/22 is a light house project combining the traditional and contemporary view towards our discipline in times of climate change, social distancing and resource scarcity. If architects, engineers, scientists, designers and planners want to take on the responsibility for our planet and future generations to live on it, we need to design in consistency with our natural circular systems and understand the act of building as an integral social approach. This requires a paradigm shift in how we understand and construct our built environment: away from a linear understanding of temporary solutions towards an endless circular approach of beauty, durability and design for disassembly. We need to give up our unconscious production of waste and reach a level of responsibility, whereby buildings become the producers of renewable forms of energy and material banks of the future. …