This paper gives some indications about how to prepare a project brief for a temporary land settlement in agreement with the paradigms of: flexibility, low environmental impact and high energy efficiency.
The context in which this work took place was a demand from Milan municipality’s for a temporary land settlement within a green urban area. The city of Milan’s administration, foreseeing a huge need of accommodations for a young target – both for extraordinary events (such as the Expo 2015), and for cyclical occasions (such as the fashion weeks) – called for an architectural solution that could be flexible and temporal at the same time, as well suited to the events that require it.
Besides the flexibility topic and in agreement with the Expo title – feed-ing the Planet, energy for life – the other two paradigms the municipality asked to pay attention were, as already introduced, the low environmental impact and the high energetic efficiency.
In order to clarify the project’s objectives, definitions of the terms flexibil-ity, low environmental impact and high energy efficiency, are given below with-in the specific field of temporary land settlement.
The paradigm of flexibility on the life cycle of a temporary land settlement could be declined in three main aspects. With regard to the materials and the tech-nical elements the flexibility is the presence of performances as movability (the abil-ity to be moved), componabilabil-ity (the abilabil-ity to be made up) and de–composabilabil-ity (the ability to be broken up). With regard to the places, instead, this paradigm is referred to the ability of both internal and external environments to be set up in many ways, depending on the users’ needs (that are not fixed).
1Politecnique of Milan.
Taking part in preliminary works and in paper writing: Claudio Beccarelli, Gaia Costa, Chiara Ducoli, Claudio Del Pero, Dashamir Marini, Claudio Martani, Rubina Ramponi, Federico Rolleri, Anna Ronchi.
Massimo Lauria (edited by) Produzione dell’Architettura tra tecniche e progetto. Ricerca e innovazione per il territorio = Architectural Planning between build and design techniques. Glocal oriented research and innovation, ISBN 978-88-8453-988-5 (online) ISBN 978-88-8453-990-8 (print) © 2010 Firenze University Press
Finally, with regard to all the life cycle either of a singular cell or of an entire land settlement (and not only on their active period), the paradigm of the flexibil-ity is referred to the design choices, that allowed the project to reach high qualflexibil-ity standards by minimizing the usage of both energy and material resources.
The paradigm of low environmental impact, could be defined as the strain to minimize the effects, both positive and negative, and either direct or indirect, temporary or permanent, that a certain artifact bring to it’s own envi-ronment, intended as the complex system of human and natural resources and their own interactions. On the specific field of temporary land settlement, this paradigm assumed a stronger value on the periods when the artifacts are taken down, so it’s referred to its ability to minimize the effect that it leaves to its own environment.
The paradigm of high energy efficiency in a temporary environment is referred to the ability of the artifacts to guarantee adequate performances in terms of: thermal insulation, thermal inertia, solar control and ventilation. The highest are the membranes’ performances and the lowest is the need of provid-ing an adequate micro–climate by mechanical devices to an internal space.
Therefore the higher the membranes’ performances, the higher the energy sav-ings. This last paradigm, in the specific field of temporary structures, plays an important role in choosing materials and design solutions (choosing the ones that required a lower energy supply from mechanical devices for heating and conditioning).
With regard to this framework the role of materials seems to be particu-larly critical, because both the performances related to the elements’ lightness and movability (the ability to be moved) and the ones related to their thermal trasmittance and ability to accumulate warmth, strongly depend on the specif-ic features of the materials. However, since in no case a design solution could be reached just at the scale of the singular elements, without considering their aggregation with the other ones, the thoughts produced at the table of materi-als for increasing flexibility, mitigating environmental impact, and increasing the energy efficiency has been declined at three different scales: the singular cell, the infrastructural, and the facilities and common areas.
Beginning with this introduction, a research project has been articulated in three main phases:
= an annotated bibliography, derived from an analysis of the literatu-re, divided in three areas (flexibility, low environmental impact and high energetic efficiency) and declined, for each areas, at three scales:
infrastructure, common spaces and single cells;
= a list of pre–design suggestions. In this second phase some examples of temporary architectures constructed in agreement with the princi-ples of flexibility has been reported, low environmental impact and high energy efficiency. The suggestions reported are declined at the three scales: infrastructure, common spaces and single cells (those last ones are divided in: pneumatic structures, skin and bones structures and self–propelled hard structures), and the following are highlight:
the dimensional problem, the feasibility and the criticality;
= a list of indicators, extrapolated from the annotated bibliography.
Those indicators derived from a critical analysis of the needs–perfor-mances approach and made it possible to find out, for each topics and at each ones of the three scales, which are the aspects that require more attention in design (for example, the indicators identified at the cells scale, for the topic of low environmental impact, are: portabi-lity, lightness, safeness in phase of rigging up, safeness in phase of usage, modularity, ease of storage, re–usability, ability to be recycle).
121 Temporary project
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