Open House.

Within the European market there are a wide variety of different approaches to the evaluation of sustainable buildings, making it nearly impossible to compare the results. To improve consistency and transparency, the European Union has launched a three-year project entitled "Open House", with the goal of establishing a uniform basis for the evaluation of sustainable buildings in Europe. In pursuit of this goal, the DGNB is working together with 19 distinguished partners from the research, industrial, and political sectors as well as consumer associations. The participation of experts from across the spectrum of the sustainable building field ensures a highly practice-oriented approach.

Creating Transparency. Together.

The DGNB brings its extensive experience in the evaluation of sustainable buildings and the unification of evaluation processes to the project. It also makes available to "Open House" its broad network of international partner organizations.

Project Partners

Regular Exchange. The OPEN HOUSE Meetings

The OPEN HOUSE project meetings take regularly place in different EU partners´ countries.
Below is a chronological overview:

  • February 2010 Kick-Off Meeting and First general Assembly in Brussels, Belgium: During the first OPEN HOUSE meeting the project objectives and all of the partners were introduced. Three points of focus were then agreed upon: the organization of the project management, the detailed realization of the work packages, and the definition of the time requirements for the project actions and deliverables.
  • June 2010 First WP1 (Work Package 1) Meeting in Munich, Germany: Focus of this meeting was the development of questionnaires for the analysis of existing methodologies, normative, standards and guidelines related to the sustainability of buildings.
  • June 2010 Second Steering Committee Meeting in Stuttgart, Germany: Important aims of this meeting were to introduce existing and future European Standards for Sustainable Construction, to review the status quo of the Sustainable Building Alliance indicators for future collaboration and to discuss about further actions for the different work packages.
  • July 2010 Second WP1 Meeting in Stuttgart, Germany: Constructive discussion was held about the criteria to define the indicators of the OPEN HOUSE methodology, sustainability performance levels and procedures to evaluate them.
  • November 2010 Third Steering Committee Meeting in Madrid, Spain: Goals of this meeting were the overview of the status quo of all work packages and a deep discussion on the pre-selection of the OPEN HOUSE indicators and on a questionnaire to define their applicability to all EU-countries.
  • December 2010 Third WP1 Meeting in Munich, Germany: Main topics of this meeting were the presentation of indicators of DGNB, LEED and BREEAM rating tools, the definition of the OPEN HOUSE case studies and discussion on the OPEN HOUSE Platform.
  • April 2011 Fourth Steering Committee Meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia: Focus of this meeting was the presentation of the first results of the development of the OPEN HOUSE indicators and suggestions for further improvement. The Sustainable Construction Glossary, a multilingual glossary developed by the European Economic and Social Committee, the Architects' Council of Europe and the European Concrete Platform in response to the need for more transparency for new sustainable construction concepts, phrases, terms and expressions across Europe was also introduced.
  • May 2010 Fourth WP1 Meeting in Munich, Germany: During this meeting the structure of the case studies for future application of the OPEN HOUSE methodology was discussed and the selected indicators were further improved according to the European Standardization.
  • October 2011 First Review Meeting at the European Commission Office and Fifth Steering Committee Meeting in Brussels, Belgium: Aim of the First Review Meeting was to present the achieved results of the project, including the newly developed OPEN HOUSE methodology, to the Project Officer and the external reviewers. During the Steering Committee meeting the discussion was focused on the analysis of the case studies received after the tender process, the presentation of the current status of the OPEN HOUSE baseline, and the development of individual dissemination plans.
  • December 2011 Training Course on the OPEN HOUSE Methodology at ARUP Offices in London, UK: during this meeting the expert group leaders, namely FRAUNHOFER, EDF,  BOUYGUES, APINTECH, DGNB,  presented the evaluation areas of the developed assessment methodology to all the other project´s partners and to the external experts for the analysis of the selected case studies inside and outside the Consortium.


More information

OPEN HOUSE Newsletter

For question, please, contact Dr. Consolata Russelli.

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