Modular buildings offer faster construction process, provide better construction quality, allow reducing construction waste and are potentially flexible. Frames of modular units can be made of metal, timber, concrete or mixed materials but lightweight structures do not always allow erecting high-rise buildings and generally present a higher risk of overheating and/or overcooling. To reconcile these pros and cons, a typology of modular building called Slab was designed by a group of architects. The building is composed on the one hand of a permanent concrete structure named shelf-structure and on the other hand of several flexible removable timber modular units, also known as modules. The shelf-structure will host the common utility rooms and will serve as docking infrastructure for the housing modules. To provide high flexibility, the Slab building was designed to adapt to any orientation and location in Luxembourg. An energy concept and a HVAC systems design has been developed for the Slab building. Furthermore, a two-fold sustainability analysis was carried out. The first part of the analysis regards the determination of the minimum required wall thicknesses of the modules in accordance with Luxembourgish regulatory requirements, although the current regulation does not yet consider the Slab building typology. The second part, which is the subject of this paper, is thermal comfort assessment, more precisely, summertime overheating risk assessment of these modules, in compliance with Luxembourgish standard. In this regard, dynamic thermal simulations have been realized on two module variants; the first fulfills the passive house requirements, and the second—the current requirements for building permit application, which in principle corresponds to low energy house requirements. Simulations showed that with adequate solar shading and reinforced natural ventilation by window opening, overheating risk could be avoided for the normal residential use scenario for both module variants.

To face the challenges of climate change, new buildings need to be further greener while being able to ensure a minimum comfort to the tenants. Nonetheless, extensibility and flexibility could be added to buildings. In this context, the architect jointly with the team of this research project have designed a hybrid modular construction called “slab building” which is composed of a permanent concrete structure and several removable wooden modules. A module offers 27 m2 of living space but larger housings can be realized by combining two up to four modules. The aim of this paper is to design the walls of the modules to meet the criteria of nZEB. The thicknesses of the studied thermal insulations, namely rock wool, wood wool, polyurethane and aerogel, have been determined in accordance with the passive house requirements in Luxembourg. The embodied energy of the building materials has also been considered in the designing of the modules. Steady state calculations revealed that a wall thickness of 40 cm, comprising 31 cm of insulation is sufficient but according to the LCA outcomes, there is no environmental benefit in having the modules comply with the AAA energy class requirements at reasonable wall thicknesses.