Forty years after the first oil crisis and the Club of Rome’s controversial report Limits to Growth, environmental awareness and sustainability are starting to become an integral part of construction practice. The new shortages of energy and raw materials precipitated by the rise of new economic superpowers like China are partly responsible. In addition, the […]
DASH #07 – The Eco House
Typologies of Space, Production and Lifestyles
DASH goes in search of the ideal eco house: from solar houses to Superuse, from Cradle-to-Cradle to support-infill systems and precise prefab-technology. This issue of DASH examines the history and the future of the sustainable home. This includes attention to families of typologies (passive solar energy, semi-climate and ventilation) and material-use concepts. Essays by Daniel A. Barber, Machiel van Dorst, Jacques Vink, and Piet Vollaard provide not only a critical analysis of the current state of affairs, but also an inspirational exploration of possibilities for the future. Drop City pioneer Steve Baer looks back on the construction of his Zome House and Jean-Philippe Vassal talks about his vision on architecture and sustainability. With extensive documentation of trendsetting homes by such architects as Frank Lloyd Wright, Ralph Erskine, Frei Otto, Lacaton & Vassal, Carlos Weeber, DAAD Architecten and 2012Architecten.
CONTENT
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Essays
An examination of the way passive sustainability techniques relate to architectural design reveals a series of dwelling typologies in which buffer zones and intermediate climate play an important role.
Architectural Experimentation and Infrastructural Engagement in 1940s America
The solar house is one of the most prominent new dwelling types, coming into vogue in the 1940s. In the USA, the combination of modern architecture, lifestyle and a wartime economy resulted in radical experiments in suburban home architecture, among them the work of Ralph Rapson.
On Design for Disassembly and Reuse
Between the anticipation of the dismantling of a home and the intelligent use of waste and demolition material, there is a broad range of methodologies,
which require a new intellectual flexibility from the designer. The focus is not on the product, but on the entire process of design and construction up to and including use and eventual demolition.
Housing encompasses both the physical, architectural design of the home and the less easily definable modes of living of its occupants. Sustainable housing therefore implies a reflection on sustainable modes of living as well.
Interviews
Interview with Jean-Philippe Vassal, partner Lacaton & Vassal
Jean-Philippe Vassal explains how sustainability, economy of means and design go hand in hand in the architecture of his practice, Lacaton & Vassal, in order to give more freedom of choice and luxury.
Steve Baer on Building his Zomehouse
One of the pioneers of Drop City and author of the Dome Cookbook looks back on building and living in his Zome House in New Mexico.
Plan Documentation
The plan documentation for the seventh issue of DASH presents a series of exemplary ecological houses. The majority of them are detached or situated in rural areas or suburbs; two are townhouses, one of which is even an example of stacked individual dwellings. Together they demonstrate how architectural design can contribute to solving the problem […]
In 1936, during the Great Depression, Herbert and Katherine Jacobs asked architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a house for them with a construction budget of only $5,000. Wright seized this opportunity to implement his ideas for an affordable home. The result, the brilliant Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin, designed down to the last detail, […]
At a superb location on the Baltic coast near Lisön, Ralph Erskine designed a vacation home in 1955 that also had to be suitable for year-round living. The client, Engström, was the owner of a steel construction company, and he collaborated with Erskine on developing the self-supporting dome construction of the house. The dome is […]
In 1966, after having taken various courses at UCLA in California and Amherst College in Massachusetts, doing a few years of service at an American army base in Germany and studying for several years at the ETH in Zurich, Steve Baer returned to the USA. He was fascinated by polyhedral forms, with which he had […]
Located in Wermatswil near Zurich is a round Solarhaus, the residence of architect Otto Kolb (1921-1996). This home, the last project he realized, reflects his radical ideas about housing and living in absolute harmony with nature. In a manuscript Kolb wrote about the house, he quotes the psychoanalyst Carl Jung: ‘The house of man should […]
On the edge of Berlin’s Tiergarten, hidden among stylish embassies and the postmodern architecture of the late 1980s, are three variegated clusters of stacked owner-built homes. They are the result of an intensive building and planning process that began in 1981, when Josef Paul Kleihues invited Frei Otto, surprisingly enough, to take part in the […]
On a perfectly ordinary street in Floirac, a suburb of Bordeaux, French architect couple Anne Lacaton & Jean-Philippe Vassal built a house in 1993 that stands out for its minimalism. Not the kind of minimalism that made Swiss architecture world famous, but a minimalism that Rem Koolhaas once described as ‘Calcutta minimalism’ and that has […]
In 1997, Wouter Hoogland and Hannah Versteegh bought a house on the Stationsstraat in Groningen, the garden of which was connected to a shed on the Gedempte Zuiderdiep. They wanted to build a dwelling on the Zuiderdiep, while keeping the shed as a horse stable and garage for their motorbike. DAAD came up with a […]
The traditional country houses on Curaçao are adapted to the climate. They make use of the constant trade winds for ventilation and feature covered verandas or porches that allow the wind, but not the sun, to penetrate their living quarters. Today this building tradition is apparently no longer a given in Antillean construction: contemporary homes […]
With their Loblolly House, KieranTimberlake Associates realized a virtually entirely prefabricated dwelling in a process characterized by extreme precision. Driven by dissatisfaction with existing building practices, they tried to redefine the relation between design and execution, and also between architects and the building industry. Central to this process was a 3D computer model of the […]
An ordinary rectangular lot in a rural expansion district of Santiago de Chile was the inspiration for this amazing Wall House. The lot is screened off from its immediate surroundings by several boscages, which however do not hinder a wider view of the Andes Mountains. This inspired the architects Frohn and Rojas to come up […]
When 2012Architecten received the commission to design a villa in the Roombeek district in Enschede in 2005, the firm had for years already been designing and realizing smaller projects in which they applied reused materials. The architects conceived the term ‘superuse’ for this system of reuse and published a book on the subject in 2007. […]