September 2007, Self-Fab House

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Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House
Self-Fab House

2nd advanced architecture contest, IaaC, barcelona, ES, 2007,
finalist (site: bratislava, slovakia)
team: martin lukac

garden variety - common, unremarkable, being of no special quality or type : average, formulaic, indifferent, mediocre, ordinary, routine, standard

Garden variety project is located on the outskirts of bratislava, capital city of slovakia - one of the post-communist countries in central europe.The project explores the possibilities of grafting a small sustainable community into one of the garden colonies. Garden colonies were the concept of leisure, often attended with the problematic soil conditions, water contamination and air pollution due to hard industry factories neighboring these areas. The project responds to the existing conditions and tries to reactivate these fringe areas by inserting a hybrid typologies. The notion of project consists of two interlocking parts: the house and the greenhouse. Housing types appropriate the form of geologic fault models, as if they were some sort of architectural ready-made. While the forms deal with geology and soil strata, the greenhouses explore the hydroponic and aeroponic techniques of growing plants without the use of soil. Project examines the double potential and different application of construction materials such as thermal insulation, which can be used not only for insulating the walls, but also as a growing substratum in the hydroponics drip irrigation technique. The hydroponic system, supplied with water from retention and filtration of rain water and operated by computer, can provide crop and create a greenhouse effect for the living space below. This space, founded on a space-frame anchored to the concrete slabs , uses the passive heating elements such as heat absorbing materials in the floor wall and ceiling.