Case Study: SDE2012 - (e)co Team

Name of organisation:

Stage of development: design/ planning

Year of finalization: 2012

Type of project: construction

Area: urban

Scale: international

Type of building: single or two storey house

Number of units/dwellings: 0

Tenure:

Street: Carrer de Pere Serra

Postcode: 08173

City: Sant Cugat del Vallès

Region/ County: Barcelona

Country: Spain

Last Update: 15.10.2013

Short Description

(e)co means equilibrium through cooperation, it is a project developed and built by students. It represents a new sustainability and low-cost model that reaches a real equilibrium between the environment, the society and the economy.

The 150 m2 dwelling has an outer skin that offers protection from bad weather and balances climate needs, operating as a greenhouse in winter and as a shading structure in summer. The interior living space is made up by three wooden independent modules of 15 m2 each one.

Key Elements

Main Results

(e)co means equilibrium through cooperation, it is a project developed and built by students. It represents a new sustainability and low-cost model that reaches a real equilibrium between the environment, the society and the economy.

The 150 m2 dwelling has an outer skin that offers protection from bad weather and balances climate needs, operating as a greenhouse in winter and as a shading structure in summer. The interior living space is made up by three wooden independent modules of 15 m2 each one.

Functional plasticity

(e)co’s dwelling distribution is organized in free of tag spaces. The house is distributed through the activities it involves, multiple non-programmed spaces. The user and the objects define the space according the needs, the seasons or the preferences.

Interspaces

Interspaces are a way to enlarge constructed surface without increasing much its price and acclimatization cost. It’s a privacy gradient, a potential relationship space with variable conditions and variable ways of inhabit it.

Lessons learned

Industralizacion and market viability

Following the premise of low cost of the previous edition, we consider and develop it further in order to achieve improvements in budget allocation. The speech and spirit is not that of being cheap but to consider the cost parameter as a balance of good performance at an affordable price.

Looking at this value of opportunity, we develop the concept of “cost efficient”, which highlights the importance of working with the budget as another tool to develop the project. This concept relates the cost and the benefits, and seeks to provide a high quality level at the lowest possible cost.

Local economies, proximity industries, and artisan material development strongly connected with sustainable development find a balance together with standardized elements, high degree of industrialization, and best available technology in (e)co. The balance within different systems produces a more effective result, using fewer resources and gaining maximum performance.

This is why (e)co is design first by understanding real needs in relationship with the difficult financial context nowadays, not only regarding construction but in society in a general sense.

To create a real sustainable alternative, people need affordable dwelling.

Additional Information

An active user

The social balance (e)co aims to achieve is to bring architecture to the user so that it becomes an active, aware of energy fluxes, in order to improve saving and recycling, being sustainable and at the same time enjoy being it.

(e)co helps this change through different mechanisms:

• The three habitable modules allow users to occupy undifferentiated spaces according to their needs or tastes. We want the house to adapt to changes of use to easily and immediately. Agile and adaptable housing for a rapidly changing society.

• The intermediate space introduces a new way of understanding comfort. Spaces of varying conditions of light, temperature, noise depending on the day, time or season. Spaces with different degrees of privacy that allow a balance between individual and communal. Gaps are acting as places of exchange and collective socialization.

• Home automation makes possible a new way of interaction between user and home. A new scenario in which the information given by the house can increase our comfort and our efficiency.

Source: http://www.powerhouseeurope.eu/nc/cases_resources/case_studies/single_view/?tx_phecasestudies_pi3%5Bid%5D=152&tx_phecasestudies_pi3%5Bdisplaytype%5D=overview&cHash=