Freiburg Town Hall: Balthasar Neumann Ceremony on 17 May 2018

Yesterday the new town hall building in Freiburg im Breisgau received a commendation as part of the 2018 Balthasar Neumann award. On 17 May 2018, the festive award ceremony took place in the Würzburg Residence. The prize is awarded every two years. This year, the award was presented for the third time by DBZ Deutsche BauZeitschrift and Bund Deutscher Baumeister, Architekten und Ingenieure e.V. (BDB).

The town hall is the first public building to net-surplus-energy standard worldwide and, during the course of a year, generates more energy than it needs. In accordance with the strict criteria of the PassivHaus standard, the primary energy demand of Freiburg town hall is only about forty percent of that of comparable modern office buildings. In addition to the environmentally friendly energy concept, particular emphasis was placed on the sustainability of building materials, e.g. by using timber from regional sources.

The selection criteria used for the Balthasar Neumann award include just such parameters of sustainable building, as well as technical aspects such as the implementation of the net-surplus-energy standard.

Another aspect is the exemplary cooperation between different specialist disciplines to create the building. This cooperation between different specialist engineers and designers benefited the Freiburg town hall in that outstanding technical and architectural quality was achieved, just as Balthasar Neumann would have liked.

The project will be presented in detail with the other award-winning projects in the 5|18 DBZ issue. The verdicts passed by the jury will also be published then.