Weaving the Woods | E13 Special Mention
Europan 13 - Espoo, Finland
Weaving the Woods RAW//deAbajoGarcia//
Weaving the Woods negotiates with the existing, occupies the clearings and responds to an in-between situation that faces nature and campus activity at the same time.
Instead of a frozen unchanging solution, the units and the rules of assembly define an open-ended system that sets off a wide range of possibilities that can be customized by developers, users and other agents.
Adaptability is complemented by the technical definition of an industrialized system of pieces. The modulation and the used of new technologies lead to a list of prefabricated elements that build the whole structure.
The proposal takes the challenge of an adaptable city from three different points of view: The context given, the housing catalogue and the construction technic. The three of them respond to four main concepts: adaptability, sustainability, systematization and materiality.
The open ended proposal responds to the uncertain needs of the future campus. The given rules allow adapting the system to the requirements that are to come, generating a new urban structure of infill buildings. The modules can be inserted in a given plot, but they can also be adapted to an existing building and to an organic area like the forest.
A catalogue of dwellings is given in order to adapt the system to different ways of living. The combination of the single modules that conforms the living unit together with its orientation and location within the whole generates multiple situations and the inherent flexibility of used.
The proposal goes after the prefabricated system not only to pursue a flexible and adaptable system but also to support a sustainable construction process. Moreover, the dry construction ensures more precision and a very quick implementation, with its aftermath lower pollution.
The system is based on a grid that works on the double direction North-South and East-West, relating the colder North side with views towards the forest and the south that looks towards the campus. While the smaller units have to choose between one single orientation all the regular housing contains double ventilation and they are looking to both sides.
The housing units are weaved resulting in a variety of blocks that conforms a continuous pattern. That continuity creates an activated area of academic life. Serendipity has become the trigger of the events in a 21st Century learning environment and therefore the mix of typologies becomes a tool. The ground level includes services and public uses while the first floors contains the special housing, leaving the top floors for the regular ones. Joins, relations and additions are regulated by the system rules.
The wood in the interior finishing of the housing areas and the common spaces introduces a warm feeling as if each dwelling was a cabin in the woods that shares certain areas with others.
Jury Report:
"The proposal presents an interesting, organically organised construction system based on a modular wood construction.
The system would enable, for instance, an interesting interactive design process where the students could play Minecraft and design their own apartment. The interiors of the building have been beautifully researched. They positively exude communal and sustainable student living. The chosen building materials strongly support the totality."
RAW//deAbajoGarcia//
www.deabajogarcia.com(http://www.deabajogarcia.com/)
Begoña de Abajo Castrillo (ES)
Carlos García Fernández (ES)
Architects
Andrea Muniáin Perales (ES)
Luis Lecea Romera (ES)
Ismael López Portilla (ES)
Students in Architecture