DenCity: Zero Energy Light Weight Construction Households for Urban Densification

Abstract

Accommodating more populations in the cities is becoming an increasingly complex task, especially with the mounting local and global migration and the raising demand on housing. Thus, the application of urban densification has recently been put forward as a promising alternative to urban sprawling. By increasing the density in the cities, it offers potential opportunities for reducing carbon emissions, erosion of green fields and enormous investments to establish new infrastructures. Yet, there are many constrains when it comes to urban densification and huge lack of knowledge especially when it comes for roof stacking approaches. This paper is a part of an ongoing research in the field of sustainable urban densification through providing innovative solutions for zero energy light weight construction. The focus aim of this research is to identify the gaps in the construction solutions for roof stacking, to feed in the innovation pipeline of the European construction landscape in the coming years. This paper presents a comprehensive review of different case studies and efforts in the field of roof raising and its repetition potentials. Based on a structured review, 8 different cases from three different European countries were sorted, placing a variety of methods in comparison with each other. The main contribution of this review lies in the analyses of the existing information in this field and the classification of the different validated methods and approaches that has been used. Finally, despite the existing challenges, it was found that the concept of roof stacking can be widely spread and applied in different contexts. Future research is going to investigate possible solution and structured scientific approaches to widen its application.