Ret­ro­fit. Have an im­pact!

27^th In­ter­na­ti­on­al Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce | 5 and 6 April 2024, "Tech­nik" Cam­pus Uni­versity of Inns­bruck, Aus­tria

Fol­low­ing its fo­cal theme "Ret­ro­fit. Have an im­pact!", the 27^th In­ter­na­tion­al Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce again brought to­geth­er 450 Pass­ive House en­thu­si­asts from all over the world to present and dis­cuss the latest de­vel­op­ments in the area of highly en­ergy-ef­fi­cient build­ing and ret­ro­fit­ting. The con­fer­en­ce took place in Inns­bruck on 5 and 6 April 2024. The of­fi­cial ses­sions were roun­ded off by an ex­tens­ive sup­port­ing pro­gramme, in­clud­ing vari­ous work­shops on 3 and 4 April as well as four build­ing tours to Pass­ive Houses and En­erPHit pro­jects in the Inns­bruck area on 7 April. The event was held un­der the pat­ron­age of the Aus­tri­an Min­is­ter for Cli­mate Ac­tion, Le­onore Gewessler.

Cut­ting-edge Pass­ive House know­ledge

With a total of over 70 present­a­tions, the 12 ses­sions and 4 plen­aer­ies covered a wide range of top­ics: from solu­tions for Pass­ive House pro­jects in chal­len­ging cli­mates to im­ple­ment­a­tion sup­port for re­li­able pro­ject out­comes to ex­amples of highly en­ergy-ef­fi­cient Aus­tri­an pro­jects and in­sights in­to seri­al ren­ov­a­tion fol­low­ing En­erPHit prin­ciples - there was something for every­one! In light of the un­deni­able im­port­ance of mak­ing the ex­ist­ing build­ing stock fit for the fu­ture, this year's fo­cus was on ren­ov­a­tions. Thus, par­ti­cipants learned more about the pos­sib­il­it­ies of fast and pre­fab­ric­ated ret­ro­fits (which are be­ing re­searched in the EU-fun­ded out­PHit pro­ject), looked at blow-in in­su­la­tion sys­tems as a key tech­no­logy for the ren­ov­a­tion of ex­ist­ing build­ings, and dis­cussed ways of en­sur­ing sum­mer co­mort in the con­text of con­tinu­ously in­creas­ing glob­al tem­per­at­ures. In ad­di­tion,

In­form­at­ive trade ex­hib­i­tion

Dur­ing the breaks, the con­fer­en­ce par­ti­cipants took the op­por­tun­ity to ex­change in­form­a­tion with the man­u­fac­tur­ers at the ad­ja­cent trade ex­hib­i­tion. Dur­ing the free ex­pert-led tours, the par­ti­cipants re­ceived valu­able back­ground in­form­a­tion and key in­sights in­to the high qual­ity products show­cased by the 23 in­nov­at­ive ex­hib­it­ors.

In­spir­ing Pass­ive House pro­jects in the Inns­bruck area

Those keen on ex­pand­ing their Pass­ive House know­ledge even fur­ther by vis­it­ing con­crete build­ing pro­jects had the op­por­tun­ity to take part in one of the four build­ing tours on 7 April. The first ex­cur­sion took par­ti­cipants to in­sight­ful pro­jects con­struc­ted by the hous­ing so­ci­ety Neue Heimat Tir­ol. The second build­ing tour show­cased in­spir­ing new-builts and ren­ov­a­tion pro­jects of the hous­ing so­ci­ety Inns­bruck­er Im­mob­i­li­en IIG. In the third ex­cur­sion, par­ti­cipants got an ex­clus­ive tour of the En­erPHit re­fur­bish­ment of a uni­versity build­ing situ­ated right at the con­fer­en­ce ven­ue, among oth­er pro­jects. And those who were primar­ily in­ter­es­ted in net­work­ing and en­joy­ing the sunny day and beau­ti­ful scenery of Inns­bruck joined the spe­cial "Net­Walk­ing" tour: a stroll of just un­der 2km to the well-known Pass­ive House beacon pro­jects in Inns­bruck, such as the Loden­areal.

Time for some net­work­ing!

This year, con­fer­en­ce at­tendees again had lots of op­por­tun­it­ies for net­work­ing. Be it dur­ing the Q&A rounds of the ses­sions, dur­ing the breaks in the ca­ter­ing area or on Fri­day even­ing at the ex­hib­i­tion party. For those who still could not get enough, the In­ter­na­tion­al Pass­ive House As­so­ci­ation hos­ted the well-known iPHA Din­ner in the Villa Blanka on Sat­urday night. Nu­mer­ous iPHA af­fil­i­ates, course pro­viders, man­u­fac­tur­ers and Pass­ive House plan­ners took ad­vant­age of the laid-back and fun at­mo­sphere to re­flect on the two con­fer­en­ce days... and hit the dance floor!

Thank you very much!

We would like to thank all ad­vis­ory board mem­bers, speak­ers, par­ti­cipants, ex­hib­it­ors and sup­port­ers of the 27^th In­ter­na­tion­al Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce in Inns­bruck! A spe­cial thank you goes to the co-or­gan­iser of the event, the Uni­versity of Inns­bruck, as well as to the net­work Passivhaus Aus­tria for their ex­traordin­ary sup­port!

With your mo­tiv­a­tion and com­mit­ment to more en­ergy ef­fi­ciency in the build­ing sec­tor, you are mak­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion to ad­van­cing cli­mate pro­tec­tion world­wide! We would love to see you again as par­ti­cipants and act­ive con­trib­ut­ors at the 28^th In­ter­na­tion­al Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce in 2026!