Europe's first climate-neutral urban quarter is being built in Ludwigsburg. Instead of building new buildings, old production halls are being transformed into new office buildings. One of the first semi-centralized ventilation systems in Europe ensures the supply of fresh air to the rooms.

The halls of the 200,000 square meter industrial area in Ludwigsburg's Weststadt district used to house production lines for refrigerators, among other things. Today, they house modern offices for start-ups in the region. The urbanharbor uses a house-in-house concept that requires 75 percent less_CO2 than a comparable new building. This creates an air cushion between the exterior and interior façade, which serves as additional insulation.

Europe's first semi-centralized ventilation system

Hall 8 with 10,000 square meters went into operation in summer 2021. The fresh air supply to the rooms is ensured by the new concept of semi-centralized ventilation - including fans from ebm-papst and the cloud-based Building Connect platform developed by ebm-papst neo. Around 300 RadiCal fans supply the air to the individual usage zones individually and as required, and do so particularly quietly.

They are located in sound-insulated housings where the volume flow controllers used to be. Thanks to the house-in-house concept, only 30 centimetres of space remained between the interior and exterior façades for the supply and exhaust air. Thanks to GreenIntelligence, the fans also emit a fault warning if their temperature values deviate too much from the setpoint. This fail-safe feature is important, as the fresh air supply is only guaranteed via the fans.

Sensors supply data to Building Connect platform

The cloud-based real-time data platform receives its data from sensors in the office building, processes it in the ebm-papst cloud and forwards commands to the fans. In addition to values for temperature, humidity, TVOC (chemical compounds) and particulate matter, the sensors measure the_{CO2 content} in the air - the basis for controlling the ventilation system. The algorithms working in the background learn from user behavior, building characteristics and environmental conditions and thus continuously improve the entire building ecosystem.

First climate-neutral city district by 2030

In the future, all data will be sent to the urbanharbor cloud for cross-sector control. This cooperation will create the climate-neutral urban quarter of tomorrow. In addition to efficient air and building technology, fast-charging stations for electric cars, heat pumps and a photovoltaic system on the roof will contribute to making urbanharbor the first climate-neutral urban district in Europe by 2030.