The Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities (MAEBB) postgraduate program is an 11-month immersive academic program focused on learning how to design and build a new generation of buildings and cities to respond to the planet’s emerging climate challenges. The program is carried out in Valldaura Labs, in Barcelona, a 135 He property located in the Collserola forest. Here, students will live and work surrounded by nature while using the most advanced technologies and design techniques in the pursuit of what is also IAAC’s long term initiative, to create self-sufficient and ecological environments.
THERMAL QUESTIONS: Q1. Having studied the sun path diagram, it is observed that there are low sun angles in the east and the west throughout the year. How can thermal heat gain be prevented from the east and the west direction? – To prevent the heat gain from the lower angle of the sun from … Read more
We don’t wantWe don’t want to FEEL LONELY We don’t want to WASTE RESOURCES We don’t want to DEMOLISH structures We don’t want to EMIT Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere We don’t want UNIVERSAL and HOMOGENEOUS structures We don’t want to LOSE CONNECTION to our environment We wantWe want to LIVE in COMMUNAL settings We … Read more
|Toward Re-Entanglement: A Charter for the City and the Earth| “Cities, when convivially organized and clearly bounded, are inherently efficient organisms. By reigning in their spatial extents, we avoid the conversion of biologically productive land into sprawling, infrastructurally attenuated, automobile-oriented hardscapes. Instead, we can optimize land already assigned to the urban sphere and thereby instill … Read more
-The future of the earth, its eco-systems, and our own civilization will be decided in and by our citIes– Learn more about Barcelona Protocol here “Only if we ensure that the material, means, and methods with which we build and manage our cities are primarily drawn from regionally available and sustainably managed biological resources can … Read more
01. Introduction Venice is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges.According to the Köppen climate classification, Venice has a mid-latitude four-season humid subtropical climate, with cool, damp winters and warm, humid … Read more
A new look on a a Tropical Residential Scheme where 40% 0f the building program is used for Recreational and Commercial Activities. LOCATION & SITE The site chosen is that of Kpeshie Lagoon, in Accra, Ghana. The site over looks the lagoon and is surrounded by trees. The site is close to the sea and … Read more
Basant Abdelrahman, Disha Arora, Pradyumna Vikharankar and Raffaele SchiavelloMASTER IN ADVANCED ECOLOGICAL BUILDINGS AND BIOCITIES 2022-23, IAAC LOCATION The Urban social housing studio aims in finding ecological and social design solutions for urban housing, with a special focus on various climate zone this semester. In our specific case, we found a site in a hot … Read more
Our Sustainable Forest Management course kicked off in December with an open air lecture from Dr. Arbol. This explorative walk through the Valldaura forest helped us to better observe and understand how the ecosystem forest functions. We also learned how to identify the existing tree species and their way of growing in the context of … Read more
After analyzing the site of Font del Gos we quickly realized that soil erosion was a significant problem.The site is a case study of human interception of an ecosystem, a naturally evolvedlandscape and water stream disturbed by human doings, causing dysfunction.Dry, eroded soil is unable to absorb water properly when raining.This causes a lack of … Read more
The Advanced Digital Tools workshop introduced me to the parametric software Grasshopper. This came in handy for the development and planning of many project-related tasks as well as for personal projects and experimentations. In the course, we were given many practical examples and tasks that I tried to continued further and translated into my own … Read more
European Action Plan for the CITY and the EARTHPresented at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, Barcelona, 4 October 2022 The future of the earth, its ecosystems, and our own civilization will be decided in and by our cities. Only if we ensure that the material, means, and methods with which we build and manage … Read more
Convened in Rome, 08 June 2022 A CALL TO ACTION The following blog post contains the 12 principles that the Charter looks at highlighting and emphasizing through the document. The students of the Masters in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities has proceeded to create diagrams for each of the principles to aid in the process … Read more
This semester Bruno introduced us to the advanced tools of the fab lab and the computer programs to operate them. This allowed us to directly implement newly learned fabrication skills into our design processes. I implemented these newly learned skills in designing a Surfboard, producing different joineries for the CODA workshop, fabricating ceramic pieces, and … Read more
IntroductionAs part of the IAAC MAEBB academic course, we have participated in the Furnish Kids 2.0 program. The program aims to improve public space through design interventions of tactical architecture. This year’s edition, hosted in the creative hubs of Barcelona and Milan, and co-funded by the European Union, concentrated on the ever-changing area of Plaça … Read more
