Research's IaaC - Students Research - Self Sufficient Building

The idea of self-sufficiency is explored trough a self fabrication process. All the building can be constructed by the future inhabitants. The constructive system, constituted of a steel triangulated structure allows the use of very few tools and of few people. The straw bale construction for the walls and the use of fiberglass and resins for the floors allows to have high structural and thermodynamic performances in a completely handmade process. The building works as a wind concentrator, to improve the production of energy through vertical axis windmills. The 3 main structural towers have different junction points, that allows different ways of circulation inside the building. The building can be reinforced and can grow according to the necessities of its inhabitants. By Fabiano Spano

A floating structure that implicates three systems of social involment. Amsterdam inhabitments, tourists and events that are recessing or co-exist according to an annual calendar, defining a dynamic social identity of the building. 01 Greenhouses_ rented by local people for cultivation. 02 Camping_ temorary dwellings (tents, boat houses) placed in a network hanged by vertical elements (antenas), using collective spaces (kitchens, wc, device) that are accumulated vertically (antennas) for energy economy reasons. 03 Festivals_ temporary spaces accumulated in three antenas, hosting events according to the local festival calendar (sailing exposition, aquarium, media laboratories). Events that iimplicate water flows and pumping systems in the vertical axis. The events\\\\' system concetrates the energy infrastructure system that consists of windmills, hydroelectric generators and hydrogen batteries, providing with energy the camping area and the greenhouses. The building functions as a battery charging during the winter months, when there are no events, and consumping it during summer. The transparency of the structure allows the building to act as a real time statistic machine that declares social data. By Fanni Natou

Santorini is an island made from the erection of a volcano. All the land is like a museum of geology. In this project we studied two different qualities of space. The one is the inside, the dark and humid space, full of history and traces. The other one the outside, is the luminous and light space, full of possibilities. Thus we create a “tower” on the outside. A Tower based on new technologies, providing energy and water in a self sufficient manner. In the inside we excavated a space, an empty space that works as an open museum. These two spaces are connected to each other, the one is like a machine that provides power and the other is like a system that can not function without this power. By Theodora Christoforidou

The city of Lagos faces a very fast growth. One thing that is interesting in Lagos is the “resistance” that it makes on the western type developments. It looks that Lagos absorbs every at¬tempt that is made base on the western type development, and makes it it’s owns. Based on this observation, the first thing that we de¬cide to do was to provide to the people of Lagos the required infrastructure for living and working, and give them the freedom to build according to their needs. In order to do that we studied the turtle system and we try to develop a script tha generates a dynamic system based on the enviroment of lagos and that it can be adaptive to diferent programs. By Fotis Vasilakis

Social Sustainability. This building aims to rehabilitate people between the ages of 18-21, who have committed minor crimes and misdemeanors by creating activities that can use the productive aspect of their time for correction and rehabilitation. Economical Sustainability. This building is a productive industrial farm. It is based on the concepts of permaculture and the generation of micro systems that allow for optimum production and quality. Environmental Sustainability. The vertical farm concepts\\\\' intention is to meet the demands of today\\\\'s population growth v.s. the amount of farmland available (there is not enough land to farm). It is designed to be a Zero Emission building, and as a matter of fact its energetic revenues should result creating a continuous surplus that can then be sold to the grid. By Gabriel Ochoa

As the Soviet Union fell apart in Moscow many of its projects were put on hold, and some cancelled altogether. For the first time, there was no longer any control over what theme or how high a building should be. Looking for a way to break with the closed and repressive building scene of the soviet Moscow , to fragmentize it, the Communal House for Textile Institute students was chosen for that purpose. The building has a 200 meter-long eight-floor block with 1000 6 m2 cabins, which was the specific area where the self-sufficient definitions and decisions were applied. These decisions led to a social integrated and environmentally responsive layer or “skinâ€￾, where events, processes, interchange takes place. By Gabriella Castellanos

In an average western context, things usually seem to be about accumulation, improvement and supposedly progress. The question for this project was to think how the opposite could be dealt in a war zone. The case study was Baghdad. The building tries to incorporate different microelements to negotiate with the context. It’s made up of a basic structure which can accommodate improvements but also survive with the minimum. By Guillermo Iván

This design is for the future. Now we almost could foresee our future about energy will be use the clean energy to continue our life. For this project, I would like choose the thermo-nuclear energy that is a kind of clean energy to develop my project. Though this kind of energy is not perfect now, we believe it will be the main kind of life energy in the future. It should build near the sea, and it can combine with the hydrogen energy another clean energy to beautify our life. As we know Dubai is a city between the sea and the desert, and it is rich. It has the good condition to anticipate the thermo-nuclear energy. Now we suppose it’s the future, and the Dubai has begun to use the thermo-nuclear energy and the hydrogen energy. By Zhao Honghao

The city of Cairo is the main focal point in all Egypt, thus migration from rural areas of the northen and southern part of the country is expected and is overwhelming. This factor, plus lack of regulation in many aspects brings to the city various dilemmas: demand for housing, high air and water pollution, lack of public areas and creating satellite cities. These factors will be taken into account into the design process of this building. In no way iti is implied that this project will resolve all of this issues, but it will incorporate them in such a way that they are reflected and manipulated in order to create a sustainable building in a economic, social and environmental way. With a programmatic redistribution of dwelling areas mixed with agriculture crops and public spaces, the functionality of the building will provide descent housing for the high demographic of migrants and permanent families, a chance to produce income and consumption products from the crop areas and open space for public use. By Karlo Alejandro De Soto Molina