MAA01 23/24 Self Sufficient Buildings Studio

Credits: Cloud at 40°C, Self Sufficient Buildings Studio 2021/22

SSB continues its exploration into the realm of physical forces and develops an architecture in the form of an equilibrium between man and the environment. Today, form still follows function, but in a world of fluctuating climatic patterns and rigid dependencies on resources, we ask ourselves: how can energy shape architecture?

From a historical perspective, architecture has always emerged from the need to adapt to a local context and constructed with the limitations of the technique. Today, in the context of globalisation and the explosion of technological progress, we are becoming increasingly alienated from the millennia of contextual architectural innovation, in favour of universal and homogeneous building standards, fueled by enormous energy consumption and at the cost of the environment. 

According to the unchallenged global authority for building guidebooks – the Neufert – the standard temperature for human comfort is 22ºC – no matter if the building is located in Siberia, where temperatures can drop to -50ºC, or the UAE, where they can reach +50ºC. In contrast to those simplistic, uniform expectations, we – as architects – need to question the applicability of universal patterns of inhabitation and rethink the relationship between buildings and their climatic and energetic contexts.

Add to that the advent of ever more immersive virtual experiences and digital worlds (e.g. the Metaverse), which are promising entirely new qualities of detachment and apparent independence of the physical reality of material and energy resources – and even our own bodies. We aim to answer this development by emphasising the value of embodied experience and knowledge, and by bravely confronting a complex and difficult, yet beautiful and rewarding physical reality. 

This year’s studio’s course is structured along the development of a series of 2 successive design missions: 

The initial weeks will see us developing a Machine Room: using digital fabrication and physical computing you will invent and construct a physical object that is both a machine that stages and performs an energy phenomenon and a room, a 1:5 architectural space for one person where the patterns of inhabitation are both affected and being affected by the energy behaviour. The design methodology will be centred around the use of the milling machine and plywood, a material which properties close to a construction material As well as the introduction of an extra specific material that both responds to your energy experiment and to a constructive reality for building. During this phase, you will focus on structure, detail, envelope, constructive detail… 

The second phase of the studio is the expansion of your Machine Room project into a larger living architectural intervention, the Self Sufficient Building, a housing project for a medium to large community.  During this phase, you will critically address the large jump in scale. On an energy level, developing large-scale climatic strategies within a higher level of complexity and relating them to context. But also examining questions of organisation, distribution, circulation, as well as – so important in the studio – all of its constructive aspects. This phase of the studio will see us working with computational tools, integrating them within a drawing base design development methodology. 

This year, the studio will travel to the Northern Spanish Coast, from Bilbao to the Picos de Europa, one of Spain’s highest mountain ranges, located very close to the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean. The trip is an adventurous expedition of which the main goal is to experience energy in the most active manner possible, articulating a series of collective experiments. This trip will also be the occasion to explore local pre-industrial architecture, observe their relationship to context and to climate, as well as visit several contemporary pieces of architecture. 

Learning Objectives

At course completion the student will:

• Experience all the steps of the  development of an architectural project;
• Understanding of an empirical approach into working with energy and its integration in buildings;
• Integrate digital fabrication and physical computing into a design process;
• Make performative architectural models; 
• Learn how to support research into spatial distribution with computational tools;
• Use parametric modelling in order to design and develop documents of architectural representation; 
• Develop an iterative working process based on the creation and evaluation of design options.