While some of you have been getting your plane tickets and applying for visa's, RAUMGESCHICHTEN has been corresponding with experts in the
field to further develop our original design and to optimize it for climatic,
structural and practical constraints. We
only have four weeks to construct the building, and we're there to learn as
well as build (and hopefully have some fun as well), so we've decided to
downsize the design in order to have a functional building at the end of the
workshop. The good news is we've received a large amount of applicants from 8
different countries, so we'll have plenty of people on hand to complete the
project!
We're still using a combination of earthen techniques -
rammed earth and adobe brick - for the exterior walls, which remains to be the
focus of the workshop. The house will consist of two rooms, a living room and a
sleeping room, with the possibility for a bathroom to be added on at a later
date (another workshop?). We've also redesigned the roof to make better use of the
climate and to increase air flow in the house with the use of the solar chimney
effect.
The position of the house will be determined on arrival at
the site. Markus and Matthias will arrive a few days before the workshop begins
to look at possible sites available in the Abetenim Art Village and determine
the best location for our design. Based on the altitude of the sun, the
building orientation should be east/west - to have the shorter walls facing
lower sun radiation. This means the rammed earth walls would be located
north/south, with the larger rammed earth wall on the north side, so that it
avoids the south sun and can be used as a cooling mass for the building
(thermal component activation).
I'll be writing more about the details of the design as we create them. Here's some images of what the house is starting to look like:
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| View from the south east |
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| View from the east |
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| View from the south |
