Garden with HOUSE2020
This is near-zero consumption home, anticipating the European standards set for 2020.
Mapout is a company that provides both development and construction services: the design team also constructs the building. In this way, we strive to recover architectural experiences from the past that we believe are essential.
Fro the outset, we have tried to extend the enthusiasm contained in the project and the sketches to the building stage. To achieve this, we have received sales promoters, attended product installation courses, thought with our hands and come to regard construction as part of our studio: a 1:1 model. Moreover, the search for new commissions, the do-it-yourself movement and the ease of applying its techniques that interest us, rarely considered in the building industry, has led us to change our paradigm and expand the usual concept of an architecture studio to the idea that the people who design a project can also be the ones who build it. This approach has helped us to detach ourselves from the bureaucracy associated with conventional building practices and allowed us to investigate unusual construction techniques and processes: to regard architecture as a product.
Our clients wanted a quiet, well-lit interior space to read, listen to music and watch films, surrounded by a garden, proposed as a garden in motion, with minimal consumption.
In this case, the Mapout construction system consisted of a 9-12.5 cm thick cross-laminated panel structure, external insulation with no thermal bridges using 16 cm thick improved graphite panels, mineral wool of the same thickness on the roof, mixed timber/aluminium frames, five windows with two insulation gaps (one with argon) set on the insulation section and heat recovery ventilation.
The house feels like a single 186 m3 open plan timber space. On the ground floor, the bedroom and bathroom zones are separated, like a house inside a house, connected to the general space with its skylight. The flexible first floor space has good views. The garden, a core part of this proposal, is distributed across four terraces to optimise horizontal areas for plantation and enjoyment. The third terrace is connected to the house by a platform that links the garden to the interior.
