HANS EEK

Sweden

The winner of WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award 2003 on the theme Sustainable Building Design was the architect Hans Eek together with engineer Wolfgang Feist.

Hans Eek and Wolfgang Feist have been awarded the prize for their pioneering work with so-called passive houses, in particular, residential buildings without heating systems, designed and constructed using an elegant and innovative synthesis of simple, time-tested and cost-effective technology. The technology, which requires great precision in methods and the building process, will, in a branch that has, up to now, been conservative, contribute to a major reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels in particular and thereby reduce society’s emission of carbon dioxide, which impacts our climate. The recipients meet the prize’s criteria for resource efficiency, eco-cycle thinking and process-steering
innovation, locally as well as globally.

Swedish architect Hans Eek was awarded the prize in 2003, at the time when he worked as the chief designer of the terraced housing units located in Lindås, a community south of Gothenburg, which had received international attention. The central concept of the project– to minimise heat loss in houses and building – is based on experience Eek acquired through a series of development projects run since the late 1970s, e.g., Tuggelite in Sweden and Ingolstadt-Darmstadt in Germany.