FIRST AND SECOND PRICE STUDENT COMPETITION


Aviary was a project for the international competition Multi Comfort House announced by Saint-Gobain Isover a company that produces insulation materials. PLANNING TASK The planning site was free of choice. The task was to design a passivehouse for a family of two adolts and 2 children in consideration of the scenic and cultural environment. Feasibility was one of the major requirements.Predetermined space allocation plan:- useable living area 120-150m²
- storage rooms or basement 60-80m²parking area for 1 car and 4 bikes
- terrace, court or something similar
Required u-values (coefficient of heat transmission) :
- all outer units should have an u-value lower than 0.15 W/m²K
- windows and doors an overall u-value of less than 0.8 W/m²K
DESIGN CONCEPT In our opinion the construction of a family home in a vast green meadow - however ecologically built - is not ecological in its inner most sense. For us it is more sustainable to create living spaces with high quality living standards inside the city. That is why we decided to look for urban building sites. But to densify the city we needed left over spaces. When taking this approach to the next level you will come past narrow gaps between buildings and firewalls. A firewall for us is nothing else but an unused virtical building site. Our focus was to create a family home in the city that wastes hardly any base area and therefore respects the public space. It even provides a roofed area for the tramway station. The form of the building can be understood as a caricature of the standard passive house box. By rotating the house away from the firewall we created space for terraces and a vertical garden. The strikingly vertical room arrangement follows from the narrowness of the construction site. The lowest level is accessible via stairs that run along the firewall. the living room with a ceiling that expands over three stories is oriented towards the south and has an additional terrace to the front of the building. The kitchen and dining area are in the second floor of the house. The moor quiet rooms like sleeping rooms and the bathroom are on the upper levels.