Studio Banana TV interviews Enric Ruíz-Geli, from Cloud9, author of the Villa Nurbs house in Empuriabrava, in Girona, Spain.
Empuriabrava is a housing estate in which the home is a MORPH of the automobile space and the boat space.
1. Experiment with the ACCIDENT of breaking ice and generate volumes of water.
2. Strive to allow natural material to define a LANDSCAPE; a landscape of pavilions.
3. Build this landscape as an inhabitable PLATFORM.
4. Measure and build this landscape as 3D TOPOGRAPHY.
5. RESOLVE the topography using contour lines every 45,15 and 5 cm.
6. The geometry is COMPLEX.
7. Its goal and reference point will be a NURBS.
8. Seek new MATERIALITY.
9. Optimize building resources using CADCAM construction processes.
10. The architect creates this SCALAR platform from the climate, the geography and the outdoor landscape right up to the skin of the house: nurbs.
11. The guest industrial designers work from the Nurbs scheme right up to the skin of the inhabitants, in search of a cellular, CHEMICAL approximation of materiality.
12. The design is always PARTICIPATORY, involving the customer.
13. Definition of ATMOSPHERES inside the skin.
14. A skin with “CONTENTS”.
The skin is able to “gobble up” the hardware of the house.
15. PERSONALIZED TUNING: a 3M area that is adhered to the spherical glazing, and is used as a reserve for the interior painting. 220 m2 of unique, personalised image, a plotter for the house.
16. The skin is reactive and manages the ENERGIES and PRIVACY: the tuning design also takes into account the customer’s privacy requirements, which is how we arrive at the design of an adhesive skin using detailed studies. People’s routes and movements, wind and sun exposure in each season. This is not an abstract design but rather different overlapped diagrams.
17. DEMOCRATIZE “elite” architecture, and bring high-tech, open-source, into the home.
CAD CAM Digital Making – Villanurbs
The building system is CAD-CAM: Cloud 9 computer-aided design is connected to computer-aided manufacturing as applied by each of the project’s consultants. This process not only permits the construction of things that used to be impossible to build, but also makes everything a means of communicating and managing in conjunction with the suppliers and the engineers involved. There is just one 3-D model of the project. This model supplies us with all the information we need for each individual discipline. This is a form of direct communication. There is no general builder in between. No information or precision is lost along the way: the laser-cut piece is the sketch translated into reality. This production process is still not standardised, and not all the disciplines are connected to the digital equipment, so we have do also invented a way of communicating with every collaborating industrialist, artist and engineer.
The land in the housing estate is occupied by redefining its allotment model. Access by boat or car make it possible to think of open, communicated, free urban planning, i.e., a single space.
The land occupation on a 1800 m2 plot is minimal, barely 130 m2. The home space is raised above the ground to the + 3.50 m level.
A reinforced concrete structure begins at two points and cantilevers out 20 m, generating this inhabitation will platform with a 15 cm resolution.
Beyond this level, a metal chassis is generated with a 45 cm resolution, a model with automobile aerodynamics in which the reactive skin of Villanurbs is inserted and developed.
The design process for this skin has been developed in three research phases:
- study of the shape
- prototype production
- study of the prototype’s repetition.
Study of the shape
Although the components can be considered in unity, their analysis as an integral part of a whole has had to consider their repetition across the entire surface area of the facade. It is only in this way that we were able to perceive their performance and function as a facade for the building.
Shelter from the sun, the wind and the rain, and cooling of the facade were the main points considered for this study.
The form resulting from this work enables this skin to act like a pile of leaves that protect the building:
- from solar radiation,
- from the rain, funneling it piece by piece by gravity,
- from the wind, blocking out the powerful Tramontana wind that blows off the mountain,
-opening it up at the same time to the offshore breezes.
Prototype production
Following the study of the shape, developed on virtual 3-D model, the base model of this shape is produced, also on a virtual base.
This mould is then sent to Industrias de la Fusta Vilà.
This company has hardware and software which can put CAD-CAM processes into practice. These processes consist of a relationship between digital design software (computer-aided design— CAD) and the machine software that permits the physical production of a virtual model (computer-aided manufacturing— CAM). Then, by reading the virtual model, a digital milling machine works on a solid block of polystyrene, transforming it by a subtraction, planing and section copying process into the physical model of the piece.
The same CAD CAM processes are used to generate the piece in aluminium. Once it is defined, at Cerámica Cumella the shape is used to cut the clay film laid on the polystyrene mould. The clay becomes warped by its own weight, and adopts the shape of the mould in this way.
Painter Frederic Amat works on this warped piece, continuing the idea of an accident that is ever present in the Villanurbs project. He works with layers of black and transparent enamel, bringing the ceramics to life. The colour and the way these enamels are applied are defined with Frederic Amat.
[...] Villa NURBS y otros proyectos inspirados en los principios de Antoni Gaudí sobre respeto y aprendizaje de la naturaleza por parte del estudio cloud9 contados por el arquitecto Enric Ruiz Geli. http://www.themakingofcloud9projects.com http://studiobanana.tv/2009/07/03/enric-ruiz-geli/ [...]
[...] pinchar este link Enric Ruíz Geli. [...]