Designed by ExS Architects Concept: Elina Karanastasi Design team: Nikos Asimakis, Eri Badouva, Stathis Vlachiotis Consultant: Maria Mandalaki and Matthijs Moelee, Alexandros Vazakas
The WarmWall house is a project of ExS Architects. It was designed for the Deventer Havenkwartier and Nijmegen Vossenpels area based on the requirements of the urban plan of Andries Geerse Stedenbouwkundige. It can readjusted to the size wished by the owners as it is designed based on an accumulation of parallel traverses of 1,20 m wide.
It is a house with a greenhouse in the middle, that can easily transform into two houses in the future. Or…the oposite: two houses built together with common or divided greenhouse that have a lot of possibilities for transformations and expansions in the future.
The greenhouse in the middle of WarmWall house is a flexible space that can be used for expansion in the future. It can host a collective workplace, an atelier, a small business, a lux big space as part of the house or a really nice little enclosed garden.
The WarmWall house bases its energy efficiency in a system of mass walls in the center, inclined to collect solar thermal energy (this is the passive renewable energy system) and a system of equipped walls at the edges, which bear all mechanical and electrical installation (this is the energetic system).
Mass walls can have different angle of inclination according to the orientation (north-south, east-west) or be completely vertical if the inhabitant wishes (of course this will have less passive performance).
Do-it-Yourself: The constructor builds the two equipped walls, the roof and the frame. One wall bears all energetic electromechanical installations, the other wall all passive. The rest is flexible according to the user wishes: He can build it himself, build half and gradually expand etc.
A lot of the material of the WarmWall house are from recycling of materials from the area itself. The facades seem to be a collection of windowframes of the industrial buildings of the area, in a try to give a design answer to the people’s request to ‘combine old and new’.
1st part: Build with a constructror the ‘supports’ (the equipped walls, the beams, the roof) 2nd part: Do-it-Yourself with the ‘Boxes’ of the interior (build yourself, or with smaller constructors, or with friends)
The concept for the house combines John Habraken structuralist idealism from the sixties on ‘Supports’ and ‘Infill’, as well as eco-pragmatism inspired by folk housing.
