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This is a proposal for a single house (about 80 square meters) situated on the top of a hill just behind the city of Ancona (in the center of Italy). The site is located in a park classified area. Parco del Conero is a nature sanctuary extending for 5800 hectares of protected area, with places of great charm: the bay of Portonovo, the beach of the “due sorelle”, the northern view-point, Pian Grande, pian dei Raggetti; 18 hiking routes developing among strawberry trees, brooms, ilex trees, pines, in the magic of the Mediterranean maquis. The area houses several species of birds, some of them very rare, together with a rich fauna. The many plants making the Mediterranean maquis are here protected and represent the third part of the whole floristic heritage of Marche (the italian region where it is located).
Source: www.parks.it

The terrain’s owner is a young lady who loves nature and animals, strictly vegetarian and wellness interested. The project attempts to approach the concept of living within nature in a different way, trying to reach both the interest and respect of the site with the client’s expectations.
Instead of using the hill as a garden and basement, the house is elevated using four pilotis to occupy less as possible the site and allow vertical distribution of flowerpots, plants and vegetables boxes, which are fixed in to a steel multystories structure. Whit this system of optimized cultivation’s control concerning earth, water, insolation and wind, the house acts just like a greenhouse. On the top of the hill the views of the waterfront and the sea are great and this direction perfectly fits with a house best orientation at this latitude (the east-west axe, lightly shifted on north) towards the sun path, to get sunshine early in the morning and late in the afternoon. During winter the greenhouse balcons will be covered by plastic material all around their perimeter to protect plants and buds from being frosted and also to get warmer inside and acting as a heat generator that will warm the air inside to reach the top of the house.During the summer the open green balconies let the wind pass through and provide a shaded and colorful flowers garden (a well protected space), and let freshness and humidity act during the evening and night. The project tries to deal within the actual discussion about sustainable developpement in architecture, not just using ecological solutions such as rain water recycling and renewable energy sources like sun or wind (everywhere adaptable by now) but suggesting a different way of living. Less consumption and wasting but most of all, self producting (according to the bio-diversity of the region) and exchange in a kind of self sufficient way and symbiosis with nature. Concerning this purpose, the pillars could become shelters for the small mammals living in this area and for several species of birds (a sort of Naoh’s ark), in the same way as the park shelters the house.

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Scientists think that ice will probably disappear from the North Pole for the first time by this summer 2008 due to the global warming. We would like to express our solidarity with the hungry ‐ and probably angry ‐ polar bears that will soon reach our lands (?) trying to find some dry land and food.

What about architecture? The earth and the city ‐ as the bears ‐ need ideas being ble to cope with ecological issue and to establish a radically new relation between architecture and nature. This is why we’ve imagined for “London 2008” a breathing and living architectural objet, in order to give a strong iconic value to the gallery that will contain, produce and distribute ideas about the future of the cities. Living beings basically differ from the unanimated ones in their ability to create relations and interact with the environment they’re living in.Like a weird animal generated by the River Thames, our proposal consist of a complex organism formed by different elements (skin, eyes, arms, heart, lungs, etc.) interacting with forces of nature to establish a mature and respectful – LOVing – relationship with environment and nature. The main roof, floating like a jellyfish, is composed by a translucent, elastic and flexible skin. This surface uses a structural system made of semi‐rigid fiberglass elements, something like camping tent poles. This allows the roof to lightly move and change his shape depending on the wind solicitations, like a soap bubble when we blow on it: this is how the gallery breathes.

On top, a random array of helium solar balloons provides for solar energy supply during the day and become a funny set of lamps at night standing as a signal in the skyline of London. When the gallery moves along the river, solar balloons can be retracted to stay on thejellyfish roof. Exhibition spaces and observation area are imagined like piston boxes, with a platform that lifts using the energy of the river coming from some water turbines. The movement of these iron lungs creates an added vertical promenade for visitors, which experience the sensation of floating on a living architecture.

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bathouseproject competition site

…//LANDSCAPE//…This is a wood blades hill for bat roosting. A vertical bat-scaled landscape…//DIVERSITY/…On the hill, bats can choose their preferred location. They have a large range of accommodation solutions. Internal and external wood blades roosts have different sizes, shapes, sun exposition and thermal condition. Internal boxes rounding the lift provide an artificial cavern atmosphere for bats, and underground ones have a better thermal stability, granted by the earth-insulating effect…/ACCESSIBLE///..Internal lift Boxes are accessible for both researcher and visitors. Researchers can easily access and take away boxes for maintenance and monitoring. Visitors can enjoy a real vertical promenade in the dark among bat roosts. Using Night Vision Binoculars, you can observe bats in their roosts trough a glass. A special glass interlayer will be used to totally avoid light and sounds entering boxes. …/FLEXIBLE/…The oval steel frame is a modular system that you can replicate and use in different location with new configurations depending on and thermal needs and size. Using the same elements you can do A or B or C+D. ///VENTILATED/// Internal space has mechanical windows to let air circulate providing thermal regulation. Moreover, bats can freely circulate through. //BAT LIGHTS// Mercury vapor lights are used to encourage moths and other flying insects from the lake and, consequently, attracting bats. ///GUANO/// A system for bat guano cleaning and recycling is integrated in the project. In fact, a gutter-like blade and a system of grid-boxes in the ground. ///BATS 2.0/// An infrared web-cams network provide to constantly record bat images. A web 2.0 internet site will manage image data to build a really online interactive exhibition. Computers will be installed in the main buildings of the WWT centre. Bye…///

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