Healthy Housing

Healthy Housing means: well-appointed, well-designed, well-constructed and well-used residences.

The project places importance on having partners in the differing climate zones with specialties in key areas. Furthermore, the project argues that a new approach is needed where the concept of sustainability is embraced by the concept of user-wellness as one of the most important aspects in the process of designing a house.

The project aims to identify the common, as well as the specific variants that condition the level of wellness of a house in either Spain, UK, Germany or Denmark.

Background

Healthy Housing is focused on research in the field of sustainable and healthy architecture looking for people comfort by designing constructions integrated in the landscape with a balanced relation between the environment and technology.

The project aims to:

• Identify the common, as well as the specific variants that condition the level of wellness of a house in either Spain, UK, Germany or Denmark.
• Work with construction in accordance to building regulations, building techniques, enclosures composition, conditioning systems, passive solutions, clean energies, etc.
• The work analyses of the different types of houses in each country detecting the influence of the local and common invariants in validating the selection.
• Identify the local and common invariants at a local and international level.
• Develop an integrated healthy housing design methodology.
• Perform energetic evaluation programmes with green and passive buildings recommendations.
• Generate a validated design methodology.
• Apply the validated methodology
• Find information about different ways of measuring the level of housing healthiness.
• Validate the design methodology for obtaining houses that can provide healthy solutions for people. Knowledge about how location and cultural background condition these invariants and make housing different.

Biannual Workshops

Biannual workshops with teachers and students from each participating institution, which will attend a week-long workshop.

This workshop aim is the coupling up of theory and practice. It promotes cooperation and collaboration with relevant environmental knowledge and skills. It encourages practical research in innovative solutions to residential development.

The workshop also encourages and promotes staff mobility both internally and externally. It allows for experimenting in new solutions to domestic environments and strengthens digital methods while promoting digital strategies. It provides digital tool-kits and encourages digital solutions through simulation, measuring digital performance.

Lectures

A series of lectures and a project deliverable will form part of the students’ semester project, which will lead to the best projects being invited to the second workshop in Alicante in July 2016, for an award giving ceremony. The Healthy Housing Awards are focused on researching in the field of sustainable and healthy architecture looking for people comfort by designing constructions integrated in the landscape with a balanced relation with the environment. The development of innovative approaches within this field is the main purpose of these awards.

The project will consist on designing a detached house inside a plot of 1000 M2. The house can have maximum of two levels plus an underground level. The project must design the plot completely so the garden must be an essential part of the project and complementary uses, as a swimming pool, can be introduced.

Detached House, 200 M2: Livingroom, Kitchen, Bathroom, 2 Bedrooms & A Small Office.

Due to the international aim of this competition, all the proposals must be written in English. Participants must work as a team.

The project should result in the following knowledge and skills:

• Identification of the common, as well as the specific variants that condition the level of wellness of a house in either Spain, UK, Germany or Denmark.
• Construction in accordance to building regulations, building techniques, enclosures composition, conditioning systems, passive solutions, clean energies, etc.
• The work analyses of the different types of houses in each country detecting the influence of the local and common invariants in validating the selection.
• Identifying the local and common invariants at a local and international level.
• Developing an integrated healthy housing design methodology.
• Performing energetic evaluation programmes with green and passive buildings recommendations.
• Generating a validated design methodology.
• Applying the validated methodology
• Finding information about different ways of measuring the level of housing healthiness.
• Validating the design methodology for obtaining houses that can provide healthy solutions for people.
• Knowledge about how location and cultural background condition these invariants and make housing different.

Four prizes of €500 plus a diploma for the best four projects, (one from each participating university).

One prize of €1,000 and a certificate for the best in relation to design, simulation, construction and sustainability.

The final presentation will consist of all the descriptive parts of the architectural project including: location, site plan, with plans, elevations, sections and perspectives of the proposal.

Documentation of the constructive part of the project, which justifies the influence of the simulation tools in the process of designing the house, must be developed, including:

• Construction section, defining façade and roof types
• Energy Efficiency
• Efficient Water Use
• Domotics applied to Sustainability
• Life Cycle Costing Analysis of materials and building techniques.

All the documentation needed to explain the proposal, must be gathered on a maximum of three A1 panels fixed on a rigid support. A model can also be considered. It is mandatory to use the A1 Panel template provided by the workshop.