Book Review: Self-Sufficient Housing
Self-Sufficient Housing: 1st Advanced Architecture Contest edited by Vicente Guallart, published by Actar, 2006. (Amazon)
For the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia's (IaaC) 1st Advanced Architecture Contest, the theme was self-sufficient housing. Although physically impossible (something I'll ignore in this review), the theme asked students and architects to think of the house as "a living organism that interacts with its environment, exchanging resources, and which functions as an entirely independent entity." Perhaps in response to this last characteristic -- the definition of self-sufficiency -- many of the proposals lack a real context; in many cases the context is an abstract plane, sometimes mapped and populated with "green," a further nod to the contest's role in the greater sustainability movement sweeping much of architecture's critical thinking these days.
Does this abstraction mean that dealing with context is too much for designs that purport to function independently? To this reviewer they cannot be separated, as the ability to design a house that creates energy for its functions, recycles its water in a relatively closed loop, enables food to be grown for the inhabitants, and other considerations must respond to the house's location. This isn't to say that some of the entries don't root themselves in specific contexts (many do), but the ones that do are the most successful. Of the four winning designs (three for single-family and one for multi-family), all of them are sited in a specific location and all of them take cues from their context in their designs. For example, the first-place single-family design proposes "a solution of continuity with what already composes a place...an extension of the environment that surrounds it," specifically rice terraces. To remove the context from the project would nullify its idea entirely.
The danger in approaching projects like the self-sufficient house without regards for context is thinking of design(s) as universal, like the International Style or Le Corbusier's Machine for Living. Design is not universal, though in the case of this competition it should be the application of universal principles, such as using the sun to heat and cool and create energy or using local materials, to a specific context. In this book projects with that approach are the best projects, outshining the rest and making me hopeful as the IaaC undertakes its 2nd Advanced Architecture Contest, the "Self-Fab House."
For the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia's (IaaC) 1st Advanced Architecture Contest, the theme was self-sufficient housing. Although physically impossible (something I'll ignore in this review), the theme asked students and architects to think of the house as "a living organism that interacts with its environment, exchanging resources, and which functions as an entirely independent entity." Perhaps in response to this last characteristic -- the definition of self-sufficiency -- many of the proposals lack a real context; in many cases the context is an abstract plane, sometimes mapped and populated with "green," a further nod to the contest's role in the greater sustainability movement sweeping much of architecture's critical thinking these days.
Does this abstraction mean that dealing with context is too much for designs that purport to function independently? To this reviewer they cannot be separated, as the ability to design a house that creates energy for its functions, recycles its water in a relatively closed loop, enables food to be grown for the inhabitants, and other considerations must respond to the house's location. This isn't to say that some of the entries don't root themselves in specific contexts (many do), but the ones that do are the most successful. Of the four winning designs (three for single-family and one for multi-family), all of them are sited in a specific location and all of them take cues from their context in their designs. For example, the first-place single-family design proposes "a solution of continuity with what already composes a place...an extension of the environment that surrounds it," specifically rice terraces. To remove the context from the project would nullify its idea entirely.
The danger in approaching projects like the self-sufficient house without regards for context is thinking of design(s) as universal, like the International Style or Le Corbusier's Machine for Living. Design is not universal, though in the case of this competition it should be the application of universal principles, such as using the sun to heat and cool and create energy or using local materials, to a specific context. In this book projects with that approach are the best projects, outshining the rest and making me hopeful as the IaaC undertakes its 2nd Advanced Architecture Contest, the "Self-Fab House."
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