Matt's Blog

Today we were given the task of our project for the exchange. We discovered that we are doing our project on a social housing semi detached home. We are asked to bring it up to "Passivhaus" standard. It is a German standard that heavily believes on insulating the building heavily and creating a sealed building envelope. The major sticking point is to bring the energy consumption of the building to 15 kwh/m2/annum. There is a lot more information on the Internet.

Wednesday night we went to an Ireland versus Czech Republic Football (Soccer) match. The stadium is absolutely massive. It holds 48,000 people. There were about 32,000 for the game when we were there. The fans are singing the whole game. I think we were standing for the whole duration of the match. Czech Republic was leading 1-0 until Ireland scored with 2 minutes left. I have never seen so many people go crazy in my life. It is something that you have to be there to experience. With the game being only a friendly match there was no overtime, so the game ended tied 1-1. No was the fun part. Trying to get 32,000 people out of the stadium and onto transportation out of the city. You soon realize that the Europeans have it down. We were out of the stadium and onto the train in 15 minutes. Pretty incredible.

Matt Bordian
Architectural Technology Student
Waterfront Campus