Today, we take a slanted roof as a standard. Independent of one another, or mutually influenced, all cultures that struggled with torrents of rain used slanted roofs covered with small segments. Cities and villages throughout Europe created very compact sets of roofs made of unified materials based on the types available in the given location. This produced a roof landscape phenomenon. This is what we protect today.

The dream of many generations about living in an attic is to implement a genuinely functional translucent, even better transparent, roof covering that will make the architecture infinite and the home perfectly bright with light. Our ambition was to create exactly that – a construction that would be indistinguishable from the common roofing materials – plain tiles, clay tiles, pan tiles, etc. There are many roofs in the Czech Republic’s historical towns that disable the use of skylights and dormers without causing damage to the visual character of the roof landscape. NEBESYS™ is thus the only possibility.

The NEBESYS™ system is a patented solution, unparalleled in Europe and globally. It is the first system of its kind in the world. The key component of NEBESYS™ is the roofing whose shapes and colours remain visually identical with the commonly used shapes. The roof plane is thus covered with stencils or ceramic tiles without disturbing the integrity of roofs especially in historical and landscape protected areas. Despite the typical exterior character of the roof, the NEBESYS™ system looks from the interior as a plane that lets in light (translucent) and, even more, as a plane that facilitates an outside view, i.e. has contact with the surrounding landscape (transparent). It is in fact a rather magical solution. In the places with the prominent protection of cultural heritage, NEBESYS™ is a new and only possibility to use the attic; in such cases, it is not about choosing from lightening systems, but it is the only possibility to maintain an intact roof plane while using an attic that would otherwise remain non-utilisable.

Invented by Přemysl Kokeš, the NEBESYS™ system was first used in Litomyšl in 2011, i.e. ten years prior to its scheduled launch to the market. Throughout the period, the system was monitored, and its ability to resist various burdens in general duty was assessed. No negative characteristics or changes were detected over those ten years. The system does not leak, withstands strong winds of the hurricane category, does not vibrate, is snow resistant, shows no marks of condensation, does not let through cold, does not create thermal bridges, and so on. Both the experimental installation in Litomyšl and the installation of a more advanced system in Mikulov provide unequivocal evidence that only 30% of thermal radiation penetrates into the interior. The NEBESYS™ system is thus very effective in reducing the internal heat gains of buildings that need not be reduced by energy-intensive cooling systems.

NEBESYS™ is continuously being developed. We are currently testing, for example, a system of roof washing with water running in the system’s battens. Small jets spray water onto the roof and wash it. In addition to cleaning, this part has also unique environmental aspects. The first one uses the law-prescribed rainfall harvesting while the other one is the physical effect of vaporisation. Rainfall that is mandatory to capture today is a valuable material. It is soft water that is free from mineral components. Especially in historical centres with the minimum of vegetation, this type of water can hardly be used for watering and it is complicated to use it for the flushing of toilets too. Using rainfall to wash glass is a unique solution during which water vaporises. Vaporisation is an important function that NEBESYS™ observes. During the vaporisation process, the surface cools down. The more thermal energy affects the liquid, the more heat it takes from the surface during vaporisation. It is an ecological cooling system where cooling can even up the remaining 30% of thermal gains and the entire system thus becomes energetically balanced. The NEBESYS™ functioning makes houses behave like trees. The transparent tiles provide shade, similar to the foliage, and the supply of water from reservoirs and its evaporation cools the house down. The city as a whole can thus be transformed from a thermal island into a set of cooling buildings with a significantly reduced need for overheating the city exteriors by air conditioning units.

The NEBESYS Team