MaTrID Project

Market Transformation Towards Nearly Zero Energy Buildings Through Widespread Use of Integrated Energy Design

This project promotes the Integrated (Energy) Design approach for delivering better buildings. Integrated Design (ID) focuses most attention on the early design stages, and seeks to ensure that the project’s Brief allows for the best possible outcomes for the Client and End Users of the buildings. From this, multiple design concepts are developed in order to allow exploration and analysis of the best performance, design and operational ideas at a point in the process that these are not determined. Once selected, the ‘optimised’ scheme is monitored through design and construction to ensure that design goals become construction realities.

A successful Integrated Design project will deliver a finished building(s) that better meet the intentions of the Client brief, use less energy and cost less overall; although costs are slightly more at the early design stage, the evidence shows this is usually recovered by Practical Completion. In support of the adoption of Integrated Design in the UK, BRE also offers consultancy support through our Client Sustainable Design Advisor services. This provides practical industry expertise to deliver low energy, sustainable buildings in a pragmatic and effective fashion.

The Integrated Design approach is developed through the MaTrID European research project, which is part funded by the European Commission’s “Intelligent Energy Europe” fund. The project involves a consortium of partners from 11 European countries, including the UK, which is represented by BRE. According to EU regulations all new buildings should be nearly zero energy buildings by 2020. The integrated Design approach supports the market transformation towards nearly zero energy buildings.

The MaTrID Project Objectives are:

  • Establishing the general understanding on the advantages and requirements of ID for real estate developers and building owners
  • Improving knowledge on ID
  • Testing the practical implementation of ID on a large scale
  • Developing a common tool-kit for the integrated energy design
  • Implementing EU-wide promotion and dissemination activities
  • Drawing conclusions for a further market adoption of ID in the years after the end of the project

The MaTrID Project Benefits are:
The benefit of the project is to cross-pollinate good practices among leading European countries (including clients, private industry, public sector, etc.), and to generate the following outcomes:

  • A general understanding on the advantages and requirements of ID on the part of real estate developers and building owners as well as on the designers’ side.
  • Practical application tools for client and design teams
  • Successfully tested pilot projects with practical implementation of ID on a large scale.
  • General acknowledgement of ID beyond the limits of the participating countries.
  • Conclusions for a further market adoption of ID in the years after the end of the project including
  • Practical recommendations on possible policy instruments that may support the widespread use of ID on daily design practice.