Dwelling in the desert

Our thesis is based on the participation in the contest Solar Decathlon Middle East 2018 in Dubai. The purpose is to build a housing prototype with high energetic performances, using the sun as the only source of energy. The competition resulted in being a chance, a suitable context, to rethink and challenge the design process.

Following the 10 contests laid down in the brief the prototype has been thought and developed through all of its aspects, reaching an architectural, technological and executive project level. The study of the behavior of the house has lead to the implementation of passive strategies which, with the help of softwares of simulation, have been managed carefully and precisely. The natural ventilation, implemented through the position and the size of the rooms, as well as thanks to their arrangement around a tower capable of extracting hot exhausted air, has been one of the main strategies. To increase this effect, the tower has been matched with a system of evaporative cooling: the air entering is cooled down through the vaporization of minimum quantity of water, therefore it goes down stimulating the chimney effect and the leak of hot air. Another important strategy has been the use of massive materials such as the rammed earth of the panels of the façade: the high inertia of these elements slows down the heating flow entering the building. The density of the façade creates a strong contrast with the light, textile element introduced as solar shading. The tent protects the building by the sun becoming also the element collecting the energy through textile photovoltaic: moreover, during the night, it can be folded up, letting the surfaces release the accumulated heat. Following the principles of sustainability, every material or technology has been carefully chosen through the evaluation of life cycle, simplicity of construction and structural coherence. A considerable effort has been made to reduce the amount of the constructive elements, making them easy to assemble as well as transportable, in order to give the prototype the possibility of being built all over the world. Each choice had to be translated into a physical object capable of responding to the requirements with suitable performances. Therefore the prototype turns out to be the coherent result of a design process which wanted to pursue a method of approaching fundamental issues, reaching a correct way of designing and operating.