Affordable Solar House design, The new generation FabLab House by IAAC

July 28th, 2010 - Posted in Green Architecture, House Design

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For 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe, The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) have designed the new generation Fab Lab house to displayed. They have created the Solar House which is to not industrialize but allow any person to manufacture anywhere in the world, from the platform of Fab Labs, or fabrication laboratories. The production methodology of the house is founded in a structure fabricated from common materials sourced globally such as plywood panels, etc., and in the use of locally found machinery there are laser cutting and/or milling machine. This new generation Fab Lab house is definitely a very affordable housing solution, designed with a combination of simple construction, geometric sophistication and technological wealth, both in its creation as an energy system as well as in the active and passive management of the house. The selection of wood, not steel, as the basic structural material is deduced from two lines of thought, the first being that a solar house must be reduced from a solar material and the second that the choice of wood leads to structural elements and components which are small, light and manageable. The architects propose a pre-fabricated wooden construction in which all its structural components are laser cut from a 1220×1440mm plywood sheet. Through the utilisation of a global network of production laboratories (FabLab’s), the architects begin to promote the idea of using the Internet to make things. Faced with the typical house model of a “box construction” made up of standard industrialized components, the architects chose to build a clever house with systemic logic components, rising into what we call a distributed intelligence. A standard paraboloid section is positioned for suitable solar tracking (per year per day), and deformed in appropriate steps aimed towards an optimal orientation for summer. The Solar FabLab house not only has a rounded shape that allows for maximum internal volume with minimal exterior surface but is elevated off the ground upon three ‘legs’, in order to create a space under the house for the development of certain outdoor activities.