Architects Luis Velasco Roldan and Ángel Hevia Antuña have built a prototype house designed for Ecuador’s climate and social conditions. The small house is made from locally-sourced, natural materials and uses passive solar heating.
According to the architects, knowledge of traditional building techniques in Ecuador has been all but lost, replaced by the use of industrialized materials that don’t perform well or have significant environmental impacts. They hope their prototype house will help to reverse that trend.
The small house has a nearly square floor plans of 48.7 m2 (524 ft2). There was a tree growing through the center of the house. Architects did not say why they were built around a tree, so we thought it was just for the novelty of it. But it's not something we would recommend; it seems there are too many potential problems with water leakage, the entry of insects, dead trees as a result of construction activities, and of course the possibility of it falling at some point.
One half of the house is the living / dining / kitchen. Floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors open the room to the outside. The other half has a bedroom, bathroom and an entry foyer that serves as a home office. Difficult to see in photos but there is a barn-style sliding doors to close the bedroom from the main living area. Bed angle is positioned directly under a large skylight. The bathroom has a walk-through design that separates the vanity of the bathroom and toilet compartment.
The architects chose a surprising material for insulation: pumice. air bubbles trapped protect the structure while the stone itself provides thermal mass, moderate night and day temperature extremes. Monitoring of the prototype shows that the interior remains a comfortable 20 to 21 ° C even outside temperatures ranged from 12 to 20 ° C
The wood construction comes from local trees. siding is Ecuador laurel and framing are eucalyptus, wood is cheap and strong growing rapidly. The house is topped by a green roof life. pumice re-used for insulation and to provide a drainage layer to the soil and humus on top.
SMALL HOUSE FOR ECUADOR | VELASCO ROLDAN AND HEVIA ANTUÑA
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Oleh
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