The project appears with the understanding of the more close built surrounding area: the cores of the old cities are identified as urban developments with bad energetic conditions which can be improved. From this initial point, the project seeks to enhance that context with the colonization of the roofs of the housing blocks, through the construction of self-sustainable houses in an ecological way.
Project descripcion
SymbCityHouse has come about from studying existing urban context. The abandon of the traditional cities, caused by the uncontrollable urban sprawl of the last decades, is the main challenge that European cities must face nowadays. In Spain, the suburbanization phenomenon is a huge energy, pollution and mobility issue, especially in the Madrid metropolitan area.
The construction of an efficient and more sustainable human habitat must try to fight and solve this exodus. The core of our old cities represents a huge energy waste for our countries and the whole planet. But at the same time, it represents the opportunity to prove that the compact city is the most balanced model for human settlings. The problem depends on a variety of factors, from the social to the technical aspect, but the most important are the affordability of operations to large scale and the social awareness of the importance of reuse and transformation of our old buildings.
This are the goals that Plateau Team’s SymbCity Project seeks to achieve. Our approach took our own local context as its starting point, focusing on the buildings and social groups which most need refurbishment operations and energy savings, in our case, the large housing stock built from the 1950s onwards around Madrid, which need refurbishment urgently.
Inspired by the mutual benefit relationship between natural organisms known as symbiosis, a new self-sufficient house will cooperate with the old buildings to reach the sustainability goals demanded to our cities in order to help stop the destruction of our environment.
SymbCity House is a single intervention that makes part of a wider urban project for the Manoteras district in Madrid. Manoteras is a residential area with a poor level of construction. The project can be adapted to many housing typologies in this neighbourhood, as it is a standarized construction that will make refurbishment operations affordable to citizens with low income levels.
Text.- Plateau Team
Sobre Solar Decathlon:
Solar Decathlon Europe is an international competition among universities which promotes research in the development of efficient houses. The objective of the participating teams is to design and build houses that consume as few natural resources as possible and produce minimum waste products during their life cycle. Particular emphasis is put on reducing energy consumption and on obtaining all the necessary energy from the sun.
