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Designers: Team Bosphorus from Turkey
- Area: 140 m²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:Hacer Bozkurt
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Lead Architects: Aslı Aldemir, Bekir Süleymanoğlu, Ilgın Yeşim Eldeş, Avni Yılmaz
Text description provided by the architects. The ReYard House has been designed and built by Team Bosphorus for the Africa edition of an international collegiate sustainable and energy efficient building competition ‘Solar Decathlon’. Team Bosphorus is-the first Turkish team competed in Solar Decathlon-including students and professors from two well-known universities of İstanbul/Turkey; İstanbul Technical University and Yildiz Technical University. The team has been awarded in 3 categories in the competition; Innovation, Engineering and Construction, Communication and Social Awareness.
The team won the first place in the “Innovation” category because of being reusable and modular (easy to build) by combining local materials with today's technology and using microalgae technology in an architectural project. It is also in the first place in the “Construction and Engineering” category with its soil panels which can be easily constructed with wooden modular structure and energy efficient / sustainable engineering systems. As well as through the written and visual publications on online and social media channels during the preparatory process that spanned 1.5 years, their presentations and hospitality in the competition process and even the methods of transferring knowledge to the visitors and other teams’ members through gamification, Team Bosphorus gained the “Communication and Social Awareness” award.
Riad is the name typology of traditional soil based Moroccan house which re-minds the life of Traditional Turkish houses with yards and open corridors. ReYard as a name of our house consists of two syllables "re" and "yard". First syllable "re" means "again" and "recycle", second syllable "yard" refers to "courtyard" and Riad. The design of the ReYard House is inspired by both traditional Turkish and Moroccan architectural styles and reflects the "art de vivre" of a modern 5-members Moroccan family. For both cultures privacy has an utmost importance which shaped the architecture of the houses. Families generally spend their times in the yards, which are considered as integral parts of a living unit. This is the reason why comfort conditions of the yard is important.
ReYard House courtyard is designed to be comfortable, shaded, comfortably humid space for the hot and dry desert climate. The separator walls are designed to allow the wind through the yard to cool down the temperature while limiting the visual contact from outside South and West facades of the house do not have any transparent elements. Solar panels of ReYard House are inclined at 15 degrees with respect to earth on top of the wooden canopy for maximum efficiency. This canopy protects the yard from the sun and ensures climate comfort. It also captures and redirects wind into the yard where the evaporation from the algae pond helps to cool down the courtyard.
The rammed earth based and wooden framed panels are the fundamental building elements of the ReYard House. The walls of the House are brought together by connecting them side by side. Bamboo sticks are used in between the inner and outer panels as insulating material. The house is designed as a modular system. The traces of the modular setup, which was constructed outdoors, are also observed in the interior space. The selected furniture and space setup created a modular and flexible interior. Garden furnitures made by the team’s skilled product designers using waste pallets and residual rammed earth panels to reduce waste and minimize environmental impact of the house and the ecological foot print.
What is also aimed in ReYard was mainly to reduce water and carbon footprints of the project by using a microalgae-based advanced waste water treatment system. Domestic wastewater coming from bathroom and kitchen, is biologically treated in Membrane Bioreactor. This operation gives us an advantage to use remaining inorganic nutrients in algae pond. This method provides an advanced treated reusable water for secondary purposes. We produce organic fertilizers through composting using organic kitchen waste and microalgae biomass. Additionally, algae pond water which promotes plant growth, is used for landscape irrigation directly. In algae pond we grow microalgae which can be considered as tiny single-cell plants growing through photosynthesis. Comparing to the terrestrial plants, growing in the same area, they are able to produce 5-10 times more Oxygen through photosynthesis. So, the algae pond acts like a tiny forest in the courtyard of ReYard and uptakes CO2 from the atmosphere.
Through these innovative systems we are able to reuse 80% of our waste water to provide water supply. We used beneficial innovative HVAC systems for the ReYard house in order to reach maximum energy efficiency. Plate type heat recovery unit provides night cooling for the living room while Single room heat recovery units with ceramic cartridges are used to cool down the fresh air aspirated into living room and bedrooms. The COP of the air source heat pump is increased by means of evaporative cooling where the higher HP COP values at night makes it possible to store “cold water” in the accumulation tank. Reyard house’s cooling and heating demand is covered by an air source heat pump system with a support of a thermal solar system. During 2 year design period of the ReYard House, members of Team Bosphorus conducted numerous of Research and Development studies in their universities in collaboration with industrial sponsors.
In the end, they ReCycled, they ReUsed, they ReInterpreted and they call it ReYard.
