Year: 2009

Project team: Maria J. García, Cindy Comprés

Graduate school: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Project strategies: Light analysis, thermal comfort, size flexibility

Personal approach on the project: Solar analysis, 3D rendering, concept development

 

The prefab. house is located on top of a building, the stucture is determined by modules with 3 meters lenght in both senses, so the house designed adapts to this structure. The smallest house consists of a 3x3x3 m module and the direct weight integrates easily to the existent building structure loads.

 

The module is composed by a lightweight metal structure. It evades the use of crane and emmits low load to the roof slab. The slab used is Metalconcrete, a lightweight slab that is easily transportable and assembled, specially used for housing and offices. This system is formed by a beam profile, a polystyrene expanded vault or other isolation type, and a concrete slab. The upper part of the module has a 25 cm ventilated chamber with folding gates, this gates are opened and closed depending on the climate conditions during the whole year. Above the roof slab, there is a false cover, which functions to receive storm water and direct it to the storage tanks, it also functions to contain the solar panels with enough power to operate the building, and to place, in the resulting space between the deck and falseslab, the solar equipment.The modules are elevated at 0.50 m above the building slab, in order to leave a space for the wind (this permits a constant ventilation). Also, this space under the module slab serves as a space dedicated to ducts installations. All walls of the house that faces north, east and west, contains an external recycled wooden plank, a 3 cm of air chamber and a 10 cm of high-density insulation, wood and plasterboard RH covers moist and dry areas respectively and both highly insulated.The southern facade instead, is fully open with a double skin panels, whose external glass panels closes up as a greenhouse during winter to approach the sunheat and opens up as a terrace in summer to allow the wind to enter inside the house.