In total, the Council has already bought books worth more than a quarter of a million Czech crowns.
Thanks to the project, the library offers books on the topics of energy savings, principles of circular economy in construction, water management in buildings, green roofs and solutions to the issue of thermal islands in cities. The case studies of a number of green buildings realized abroad are probably the most useful ones from a practical point of view.
The Council's aim is to achieve the so-called Vision Zero, a state where buildings will have zero environmental impact throughout their life cycle. All its educational activities, including the purchase of specialized literature, aim to achieve this. “We try to motivate all those involved in building development to change the way buildings are designed, built and operated. However, in order for architects and designers to design, builders to build and building owners to operate them with minimal environmental impact, they should have all relevant information which is brought to them by the project Green Building in NTL,” said the Council's Executive Director Simona Kalvoda.
The educational efforts of the Council were also appreciated by the head of the Institute of Spatial Planning and Professor of the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University, Karel Maier. "If something is to be sustainable, it must be sustainable for the generation to come," he explained the importance of educating architecture adepts in technology and benefits of green construction.
The books are not placed in one comprehensive collection dedicated to the topic of green building but are sorted according to subtopics in sections such as architecture, energy, civil engineering, building materials etc. According to NTL's experience, books organized in this way address readers in a more effective way - even those who originally did not look for the topic of green construction at all. Books can be studied on site or borrowed free of charge under the terms of the normal library regulations.
“We are not experts in all fields, we are just administrators. Therefore, in cooperation with the Czech Green Building Council, I see a huge potential. As a library we can fully rely on the fact that books selected by experts from the Council are among the best in the field,” said the NTK director Martin Svoboda. According to him, all 140 publications have been evaluated by their new evaluation software and the collection has achieved excellent results. The most popular books have been so far the books on building certification and digitalization of design, ie the introduction of the BIM (building information modeling) system. Due to the interest of readers, the Council decided to continue the project in a new form and is currently discussing its form with partner companies and NTL.
The Green Building project at NTL is being supported by selected member companies of the Czech Green Building Council. Among them are the consulting company in the field of environmental certification of buildings EkoWATT CZ, the supplier of building materials Saint-Gobain Construction Products CZ, the architectural studio Jakub Cigler Architekti, the construction company VCES and the last but not least ELAN Interior, supplier of office equipment, Schneider Electric CZ and the construction company Skanska.
