Fab Lab Solar House (2009-2010)
Fab Lab Solar House is the first completely self-sufficient solar house in Barcelona. Built with wood and measuring 70 square metres it is designed to be inhabited by four persons.
It was digitally designed and built using CNC (computer numerical control) machines to enable flexible industrialisation, freeing it from formal or dimensional repetition of traditional industrial elements.
Opposed to the discordant sum of elements coming from different technological fields, opposed to the typical “box + panel” model, the project opted for a distribution of intelligence. Each component of the prototype contains the same technological, energetic and structural level as the others. The logic of the whole is to be found in each one of the parts, and not vice versa.
Components defining the project:
Firstly, the decision to opt for a different model of industrialisation. As opposed to mass industrialisation of standard products, digital design and new technologies for customised fabrication –CAD CAM and the close links between design and fabrication– proportion a huge potential to adapt to different specific needs and responses.
Secondly, opting for an expanded definition of technological efficiency. IaaC wishes to add a factor of accessibility to the concept of efficiency and apply these values to all phases in the design of the prototype, from the structure to the finishing.
Thirdly, the emergent logic of the component, of distributed intelligence, a deployment of networked sensors and metres (energy collection, thermal exchange, ventilation) and of the user (consumption, spaces in use, needs), making both compatible and adaptable to each other.
Director: Vicente Guallart
Researchers: César Daoud, James Brazil, Jezi Stankevic, Minnie Jan, Daisuke Nagamoto, Romuald Spilevski, Ricardo Zaldivar Armenta, David Moreno Rubio
Acknowledgements: Neil Gershenfeld, Director of MIT-CBA; Daniel Ibáñez and Rodrigo Rubio, Co-directors of research project
