IDEA is a multi-national collaborative project which is funded by the European Community to establish a European database on energy-efficient and solar building with partners from Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland and United Kingdom.
IDEA aims at the presentation and dissemination of the relevant basic knowledge and specific expertise. To achieve this goal, IDEA uses modern techniques of multi-media communication. IDEA includes a detailed summary of 60 carefully selected building examples, several data bases (climates, material properties), a collection of very useful tools for preliminary design and calculations as well as an extensive encyclopedia (survey on key topics, glossary).
Using solar energy as a resource as well as the potential of energy-efficient building will result in a dramatic reduction of conventional energy needs for heating, cooling and illumination. In almost every country exist already several built examples - dwellings, schools, office buildings - which demonstrate how energy saving concepts and the utilization of solar energy can be successfully realized. However, the implementation of such results into common practice is still insufficient and urgently needs an intensification.
IDEA, the Interactive Database of Energy-efficient Architecture, displays and illustrates the whole range of solar and energy-efficient building as well as retrofit. The corresponding knowledge is supplied by modern multimedia software.
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