First all-solar eco-building in Eastern Europe from Italy

The “made in Italy” of the environment goes to Hungary. Last 27 June, the Rec Congress Center (the regional environmental center for Central and Eastern Europe), a zero-emission building with full energy self-sufficiency, fully designed by Sustainable Architecture, a company based in Palermo, with the supervision of Milan Politecnico and financed by the Ministry of the Environment, Territory and Sea, with an amount of 1.75 million Euros. The center, built in Szentendre near Budapest, is the first eco-building with zero emissions in Central and Eastern Europe and the the third worldwide.
“This environmental cooperation – said Corrado Clini, Rec President and Director of the Ministry of the Environment, Territory and Sea – is an opportunity for the economic and social growth of Central and Eastern European countries according to a sustainable development model, still suffering from a severe environmental deficit. The center represents an eco-smart building model using high energy and environmental efficiency technology and materials, and it can be a vehicle for Italian technologies and design promotion”.
The new conference center, whose eco-renovation started in 2005, is an example of excellence for the eco-compatible architecture and a showcase of what can be environmentally done in the building industry. It’s a building with zero consumption of fossil energy, fed by solar energy only. Energy is provided through a photovoltaic system (29.5 kWp) – a real solar power plant, the biggest one in Hungary – connected to the grid and integrated to the south surface and in a shelter on the roof of the building. The eco-structure was designed to minimize heat dispersion in winter and to create a barrier against heat in summer, using at the same time natural light as much as possible. Heat and refrigeration are provided thanks to geothermic heat pumps, a high-efficiency system, which uses the thermal capacity and the constant temperature of soil.
“I’m extremely proud of this implementation, I assume the cooperation tool can be considered as a valid way for innovation,” so Clini. This is the second eco-smart building, after the one in China, based on an Italian eco-cooperation design.