California Eco Homes Double by Khalili

Nader Khalili's affordable and eco-friendly ceramic, domed homes could one day house the first settlers on the Moon.

The Iranian-born, California-based architect's designs build upon elemental materials—earth, water, and fire—and their remarkably simple construction rely only on basic architectural forms, such as arches and domes. Once the structure is secured, the interior of the dome is kiln-fired, which seals the inside with a thick terracotta crust.

"To me it's obvious to use earth as a building block," Khalili tells AFP. "I don't consider that I have invented anything at all. "All the Mediterranean civilizations used earth or natural materials in their architecture."

Besides having his work recognized by the United Nations, Khalil is also regularly invited to give presentations to NASA about the possibilities of using his designs, which cost US$3,200 each to build, for lunar colonies. Because transporting thousands of tonnes of heavy materials from the Earth to the Moon isn't feasible, says Khalil, raising buildings from lunar soil presents an attractive alternative.

Some of Khalil's designs can even withstand earthquakes—primarily, he says, because all his houses rely on the arch. " The traditional shape of a square house with vertical walls is almost designed to fall over one day. With an arch nothing collapses," Khalil says.

In fact, local authorities in earthquake-prone California recently approved Khalil's larger, more-elaborate homes, known as "superadobes" after the first terracotta homes built by Spanish settlers to the state. The structures, which are naturally air-conditioned because of strategically placed openings in the walls, can be completed by three people within a week for around US$90,000.

On a humbler scale, mini-domes based on Khalili's designs were constructed to house people made homeless by the earthquakes in Iran in 2003 and Pakistan in 2005. "Imagine a world where every refugee has a roof over their head—that hardly costs anything," Khalili says.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/california_eco.php

Una casa per tutti

MVRDV, clotheshouse.

Beamdesign, pallet house.

Peruan Red Cross+IFRC, shelter.

Gio Ponti in late 1942 chose "Casa per tutti" ("a house for everybody") as title in a "Stile" issue first page. It was also the slogan and guide line for the VIII Triennale di Milano.
Today this is still a problem, a state of emergency increasing day by day not only in disaster sites, but in our cities with fragmented suburbs, slums, insufficient popular housing, first reception centres for migrants, Rom camps etc...
The exposition "Una casa per tutti" at Triennale di Milano (23th May - 7th September) shows a wide range of experimantal emergency housing, divided in four sections - Fast Houses, Utopias and New Materials, Micro/Macro, Emergencies -.

Between the analysed solutions can be found the existenz minimum of Le Corbusier, Gropius, Aalto, Prouvé, Fuller's geodetic structures, the Living Pod (1966) of Archigram, and so on until today, with Carolina Pino's cardboard shelters and Madhouser's Huts in recycled materials, MVRDV, Cliostraat, David Adjave, Shigeru Ban, Morphosis, the Chilean architect Aravena, Kengo Kuma, the Red Cross shelter and IFRC in Peru etc...

At the same time, "La vita nuda" ("the naked life", coordinated by Aldo Bonomi) presents the harsh reality of abusive settlements in Rome and maps 82 situation of risk in Milan municipality with a rich visual support of photos, clipping and installations.

http://www.triennale.it/index.php?lang=_eng&id=1&tbl=0&idq=726 http://milano.repubblica.it/dettaglio/In-Triennale-la-casa-per-tutti/1462936

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture: energy-efficient and sustainable architecture on an international scale

"We believe that architecture has a unique power to influence our world".
This is the beginning sentence of AS+GG's philosophy.
Two exemples of design " that aid society, advance modern technology, sustain the environment and inspire those around us to improve our world".


MASDAR HEADQUARTERS (MASDAR CITY, ABU DHABI, UAE) is the first building in the zero waste, zero carbon emission Masdar City outside of Abu Dhabi in United Arab Emirates. The Masdar Headquarters will be the first mixed-use positive energy building in the world. AS+GG worked with MEP engineers Environmental Systems Design and structural engineers Thornton Tomasetti on the design.

Clean Technology Tower Building (Chicago) on principles of biomimicry, Clean Technology Tower utilizes advanced technologies and climate-appropriate building systems to foster a symbiotic relationship with its local environment. The tower is sited and formed to harness the power of natural forces at its site- but it refines the conventional methods of capturing those natural forces to significantly increase efficiency. Wind turbines are located at the building’s corners to capture wind at its highest velocity as it accelerates around the tower. The turbines become increasingly dense as the tower ascends and wind speeds increase. At the apex, where wind speeds are at a maximum, a domed double roof cavity captures air, allowing for a large wind farm and the use of negative pressures to ventilate the interior spaces. The dome itself is shaded by photovoltaic cells that capture the southern sun. These systems provide both comfort and energy to the space.

http://www.smithgill.com/

La Maison Tropicale landed by the Thames...?!?!

La Maison Tropicale, Paris 1949. Interior surface 180 square feet, terrace 500 square feet.
Jean Prouvés Tropical House as photographed by Bernard Renoux in Brazzaville in 1996. (Copyright Bernard Renoux: http://www.renoux-photo.com )

La Maison Tropicale by Jean Prouvé, beside Queensboro Bridge, NYC 2007.

The Maison Tropicale is a beautiful modernist artefact designed in 1951 by visionary French architect Jean Prouvé.
The Masion Tropicale really was a flat-pack house, and it was way ahead of its time - not for nothing has Prouvé been labelled "the godfather of high tech" (he was also on the judging panel for the Pompidou Centre). It was designed to be flown out to remote parts of Africa in cargo planes, to house French colonials so it is made entirely of flat, lightweight aluminium and steel pieces, standing on concrete stilts. Built for tropical temperatures, it features an ingenious natural ventilation system - using heat on the double roof of the house to draw in fresh air through openings in the walls and up into the ceiling. There are also adjustable sunshades around the veranda, double-skinned insulated walls and sliding doors while little circular portholes of blue glass protect from UV ray.
Only three of these houses were made in Niger and Congo, since the 50s until 2000 when Eric Touchaleaume found them, shipped them back and got them restored.
The one of the three 1951 prototypes, originally installed in Brazzaville, was bought by the New Yorker hotelier André Balazs for $ 4,968,000 ($ 5,028 per square foot) and has been lent for public view until April the 13th in front of the Tate Modern museum in London, waiting to end up as the centerpiece of some sort of environmentally sound resort in Central America.

The Maison Tropicale was also taken as theme of investigation by Angela Ferreira, chosen to represent Portugal at the 52th Venice Biennale.
The artist presented her work "Maison Tropicale", consisting of a large-scale installation, which includes sculptural and documentary elements alluding to colonial history and to contemporary colonial phenomena.
Angela Ferreira continues her investigations into the ways in which European modernism adapted or failed to adapt to the realities of the African continent, situated conceptually between the failure of modernism in the so-called centres, and the conflicting impact of colonizers attempting to implement modernism across Africa.
The critical proposition is shared by Manthia Diawara, which follows Ferreira's visits to the sites where the prototypes of the houses were installed in Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo and Niamey in Niger, as well as the subsequent reclamation (see the titles in the press official page:"saved from the jungle") of the prototypes by the Western art world. In a 58-minute film he shows the story of Mirelle Ngasté, the last owner of the Brazzaville Prouvé's house. The premier of the film took place on March th 10th in Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, with the opening of "Hard rain show" by Angela Ferreira and the Berardo Collection Museum.


maison tropicale in london http://www.lamaisontropicale.com/www/ http://www.designmuseum.org/exhibitions/2008/prouvehouse

maison tropical by angela ferreira and manthia diawara http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/4202 http://www.michaelstevenson.com/contemporary/exhibitions/ferreira/ferreira_diawara.htm http://www.artafrica.info/html/eventos/evento_i.php?id=2049