Zapadnaya Dolina offers a number of advantages, but one unique project makes it truly innovative. In the West, they may call it a project, referring to zero power consumption, zero hazardous emission and zero waste. In five or six years’ time, the same Triple Zero principle will be mandatory for all construction projects in Europe.
RDI can offer an Active House – the only project of its kind in the market – already now. It may be interesting to those buyers for whom spaciousness, plenty of light, a healthy microclimate and care of nature are true values.
Initially, the project was seen as an example of how to make a relatively small house with an area of 230 square metres both functional and attractive. Its implementation, however, was not easy and required a combined effort of specialists from Russia, Denmark and France who focused their attention on the right location, configuration and planning of the house and developed functional design solutions from window blinds, to smart systems, to the arrangement of furniture – all of which has added to the efficiency with which the house can receive and save energy from renewable sources.
The Active House consumes five times less electricity than is required by Russian construction rules and standards and, at the same time, it literally shines inside thanks to unique architectural solutions. Incidentally, its daylight factor is 10 times higher than the accepted standard.
Special mention should be made of the fact that living in the house was a family of five. By building it, RDI gained invaluable experience to be used in the development of uniform Russian standards relating to green construction.
For the first time ever the famous house featuring in numerous reports and articles has been put up for sale at its cost price.
Naturally, active house projects are more expensive than ordinary ones, but in the long term they pay back because of minimum upkeep costs. The success of building similar projects in Britain, Germany, Denmark, Hong-Kong and South Korea shows that active houses have a future. The owner of huge hydrocarbon resources, Russia is still standing apart from those countries, but the process has already been launched. Information about Russian experience is given on the project page at http://www.activedom.ru/.