19-09-2011

Energy bunker and hill to provide clean power for Hamburg

Sustainable Architecture,

IBA Hamburg is an urban renewal project that examines the environmental concerns facing today’s cities.



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Energy bunker and hill to provide clean power for Hamburg

IBA Hamburg is an urban renewal project that examines the environmental concerns facing today’s cities. The city of Hamburg has been chosen for the creation of a small-scale sustainable cityscape which, if successful, could be used as a model for other cities. Rather than importing clean energy from other areas as many urban communities do, the project plans to generate energy locally by repurposing an abandoned bunker dating back to World War II and an industrial landfill.
During World War II, this massive flak bunker in the Wilhelmsburg neighborhood of Hamburg was used to shelter up to 30,000 people during Allied air raids. Though part of the building was demolished in the Seventies, the main structure stood abandoned near the center of the city until recent plans re-imagined it as a renewable energy plant.

The core will be hollowed out to accommodate a biomass heating plant along with a storage tank to pump hot water to homes in the surrounding area, while solar panels lining the roof and south façade will generate enough energy to meet the needs of nearly 3,000 households.
The reclaiming of a toxic industrial landfill, fittingly renamed “energy hill,” will provide local clean energy for an additional 2,000 homes. Three advanced wind turbines are expected to be in place by mid-2012, and arrays of solar panels will line the slopes. Grass cuttings will even be reused and transformed into biofuel.
The project brings Germany a step closer to achieving its goal of 80% renewable energy by 2050 and should be complete by early 2013.


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