6 minute read
when climate matters
RAFAEL GÓMEZ-MORIANA
The urban architecture of the European city has traditionally been shaped more by aesthetic notions of urbanity and decorum than by performative factors such as climate. Street symmetries and hierarchies of front versus back have usually outweighed factors such as solar orientation or cross-ventilation in the design of high-density urban housing, resulting in many dwellings that do not take maximum advantage of natural climatic conditions. How might European urban architecture be reconsidered in this regard?
For this hypothetical exercise, I selected a standard urban block in Barcelona’s Eixample, the urban expansion planned by the reformist civil engineer Ildefons Cerdà in 1859. This urban plan was revolutionary in its day for its scientific basis and the priority it placed on human health and well-being over urban monumentality and aesthetics. It turned out much more densely built-up in the end due to property speculation, of course, but its characteristic standard square block with chamfered corners has long proved talismanic to architects in this city.
If Cerdà’s Eixample plan sought to ensure better personal and familial well-being in a time of rampant industrialisation and urbanisation, in the context of today’s climate emergency it is planetary wellbeing that needs to be addressed.
Today’s typical Eixample building, often more than 20 metres deep, depends on lightwells to bring light and air to many of the bedrooms, and uses internal vertical service cores to reach either double-aspect dwellings that are awkwardly elongated or else single-aspect dwellings that are without natural cross-ventilation. Although Cerdà ingeniously rotated his grid 45° so that no edge of a block would ever be completely without sun, many Eixample dwellings today do not receive adequate daylight in winter while other dwellings receive too much solar heat gain in summer.
This project reconsiders the Cerdà block with a new generic building type based on a housing system whose dwelling units each contain a generous private outdoor entrance porch always situated on the sunny side of a perimeter block building, whether it faces out toward the street or inward to the courtyard of the block.
This entrance porch is an outdoor space large enough to accommodate outdoor seating, clothes drying racks, bicycles, and is situated between a communal outdoor walkway providing access to a small number of dwellings on every floor, and to the central kitchen/dining room of every dwelling. It is at once both an intermediary social filter between the communal and the private realm, as well as an intermediary climatic realm: the private porch can be closed in winter by means of a polycarbonate sliding partition that captures passive solar energy, or it can simply be left open in summer. On the outside, a parallel sliding shutter with horizontal louvres provides security and visual privacy while permitting natural ventilation. The choice of which sliding partition to enclose the porch with rests entirely with occupants of the dwelling.
Each of these entrance porches has glass sliding or folding doors into a kitchen and dining room within the unit — a central space from which all other rooms are accessed. These rooms, some of which face onto the south-orientated porch while others face north, are roughly equal in size and do not have programmatic uses assigned to them. Residents use them as they see fit, whether as a double or single bedroom, a living room, a home office, a room in a shared flat, or for whatever is needed. In a shared flat all generic rooms can be used as bedrooms, with the kitchen/ dining area and connected porch being the main social spaces.
The concept of generic rooms has been previously explored by architects such as Peris+Toral, HArquitectes and MAIO (among others), while the idea of the porch as a filter between a communal access walkway and a private dwelling has been previously explored by architects such as Data AE and Narch. The innovative precedents realised by these architects for social housing promoters such as IMPSOL in the Barcelona metropolitan area have opened exciting new ground for the architectural exploration of new, more flexible and climatically responsive kinds of dwelling units for housing.
The project is comprised of five dwelling unit types of varying sizes, ranging from a two-room unit of 47 m2 to a large six-room unit of 125 m2 for use by either large or extended families, or as a co-living arrangement. Units can be combined to form a classical perimeter block, a perimeter block bisected by a laneway, or simple slabs, all of which are typical conditions in the Eixample. As is also typical throughout this district, the ground floor is exclusively reserved for commercial retail units and entrance lobbies to the residential storeys above. It is important to note that in Europe, single stairs are generally permitted in multi-family residential buildings as long as certain size limitations are adhered to. The generic five dwelling unit types in this proposal are neither highly luxurious nor minimal, making them suitable for varied forms of tenancy, typical in Spanish urban housing.
The density of this building type is somewhat lower than that of much of the Eixample, mainly owing to a reduced, shallower building depth now required by law.
Although Barcelona’s Eixample grid is almost entirely consolidated, there is no reason why Cerdà’s urban pattern cannot continue to be used today. It provides sufficient flexibility for a variety of approaches and uses, as this design project seeks to show.
Rafael Gomez-Moriana runs the Barcelona term-abroad program for the University of Calgary School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape; is a Spain correspondent for The Architectural Review and Bauwelt; and designs housing systems just for the hell of it. rafagomo.com @rafagomo
