Hans Eek and Wolfgang Feist have been awarded the prize for their pioneering work with so-called passive houses, in particular, residential buildings without heating systems, designed and constructed using an elegant and innovative synthesis of simple, time-tested and cost-effective technology.

The technology, which requires great precision in methods and the building process, will, in a branch that has, up to now, been conservative, contribute to a major reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels in particular and thereby reduce society’s emission of carbon dioxide, which impacts our climate. The recipients meet the prize’s criteria for resource efficiency, eco-cycle thinking and process-steering innovation, locally as well as globally.

The architect Hans Eek is the chief designer of the terraced housing units located in Lindås, a community south of Göteborg (Gothenburg), that has attracted international attention. They were ready for tenancy in 2001 and were recently evaluated in an interdisciplinary university study, both as pertains to technology and tenant-social environment. The basic concept – to minimise heat loss – is based on experience Eek acquired through a series of development projects run since the late 1970s, e.g., Tuggelite in Sweden and Ingolstadt-Darmstadt in Germany.

Terrace house at Lindås, south of Gothenburg

Wolfgang Feist, PhD in Engineering, has constructed similar terraced housing units in Darmstadt with very low heat loss and a minimum of active operating energy. He first worked at the Institut fur Wohnen und Umwelt and later founded the Passivhaus Institut, PHI. During the years 1998-2002 Feist was the scientific director of the now completed EU project Cepheus, initiated together with Hans Eek, among others, with the purpose of promoting the passive house project, not only in Sweden and Germany, but also in Austria, Switzerland and France.