STUDIO II – SELF-SUFFICIENT BUILDINGS

Research on self-sufficient case studies

by MARIA MARGARITI

Qingdao Sustainable Neighborhood Project (QSNP)

ECO-BLOCKS

By: Harrison Fraker, FAIA, Dean and William Wurster Professor, College of Environmental Design University of California, Berkeley

Location: ChinaApril 2008

part of the Urban Sustainability Project

Eco–Block goals

• Mass replicable• Economically viable• Resource self sufficient• 100% wastewater recycled on site• 75%+ reduced potable water demand• 100% on-site renewable energy generation• Encourage journeys by foot, bicycle and transit• 40% to 60% site area to be green space

• The integrated, whole-systems approach is made of proven existing technologies. • The innovation lies in how the systems work together.

ENERGY

WATER

WASTE

SYMBIOTIC INTERLOCK

By: Meta-territory_studio, Daekwon Park

Location: Chicago USAFebruary 2008

Proposal for the eVolo Skyscraper Competition

The project takes place in this urban context, investigating the way to reunite the isolated city blocks and insert a multi-layered network of public space, green space, and nodes for the city.

• A series of prefabricated modules ,clipping onto the exterior of existing buildings, serving different functions would be stacked on top of each other, adding a layer of green space for gardening, wind turbines or social uses to make new green façades and infrastructures

• The vertical garden unit is an open structure which provides a habitat for plants, insects, and animals, which also becomes a public park for cities where natural spaces are limited.

• The wind turbine unit is designed to incorporate four wind turbines which convert the kinetic energy of the wind that flows through the skyscrapers into electrical energy.

RAIN COLLECTOR SKYSCRAPER

By: Ryszard Rychlicki, Agnieszka Nowak of H3AR

Location: USA2010

Proposal for the eVolo Skyscraper Competition

Under a roof's surface, there are water reservoirs in the form of a large

funnel and reed fields, which serve as a hydro botanic water treatment unit.

The unit processeswater into usable water that is further

transmitted to apartments.

• A network of gutters on the external surfaces of the building is designed to capture rainfall flowing down the building.Such flowing rainfall is transmitted to floors and its surplus is stored in a reservoir under the building. water captured and processed by the building may be used for flushing toilets, feeding washing machines, watering plants, cleaning floors and other domestic applications.

water consumption table

DRAGONFLY

By: Meta-territory_studio, Daekwon Park

Location: New York City, Roosevelt IslandFebruary 2008

Proposal for the eVolo Skyscraper Competition

The Dragonfly project suggests building a prototype of urban farm offering around a mixed programme of housing, offices and laboratories in ecological engineering, farming spaces which are vertically laid out in several floors and partly cultivated by its own inhabitants.

Floor by floor, the tower superposes not only stock farming ensuring the production of meat, milk, poultry and eggs but also farming grounds, true biological reactors continuously regenerated with organic humus.

The tower, true living organism, becomes thus metabolic and self-sufficient in water, energy, and bio-fertilizing.

Intergetion of renewable energies

• A solar shield placed on he South prow of the tower produces 50% of the electric energy needed.• Three wind machines with vertical axes of Darrieus type produce the other 50%• Vertical gardens that filter the rain water and the effluents of domestic liquid waste of the tower inhabitants and undergo an appropriate organic treatment for the farming reuse

“Passive” system•The whole set forms «double layer» architecture in bee nest mesh that exploits the solar passive energy at its maximum level, by accumulating the warm air in the winter in the thickness of the exo-structure, and by cooling the atmosphere by natural ventilation and by evapo-perpiration of the plants in the summer.