Tagged events
Passive House Days in Cavriago: a great success
On Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th, our construction site in Cavriago was open to the public for the International Passive House Days. On Friday 13th, the local Scuola Edile visited us for a class on energy efficiency.
The event was a great success: the unexpected number of visitors (more than 100!) shows the great interest for Passive Houses in Italy.
In Cavriago, we’re currently building two certified Passive Houses, with a load bearing concrete frame and baked clay blocks as infill, and a wooden roof. For the first time in the world for a “warm” country, the whole construction system is being certified: we’re going to present it at the 2016 International Passive House Conference in Darmstadt, Germany.
A moment during the visit of the local Scuola Edile.
The event attracted over one hundred people, with a mixture of professionals and non professionals. We’d like to thank the visitors who came from Garfagnana and Faenza (over 100 km away!), as well as people from Reggio Emilia, Modena, Parma and Cremona.
We also would like to thank the local Architect’s Association, who attributed continued education credits to our event. Our site was visited by over twenty architects.
The construction site open to the public, on Saturday and Sunday.
The event was a success: one of its main goal was to locally share information about Passive Houses. For this reason, we are considering replicating the event later on, probably around February 2016.
We include here the photos of the information panels we prepared for the event.
Pre-existing building
Heath and comfort
The Passive House
The design of a Passive House
Construction details
Thermal bridges
Mechanical ventilation and airtightness
Construction photos
Costs of a Passive House
The most efficient solar panel: the window
On site verification
International Passive House Days in Cavriago, Italy
The International Passive House Days are an event organized by the Passivhaus Institut, to publicize what a passive house is, and to let people “touch” the state of the art of construction in terms of comfort and energy efficiency.
This year, we take part to the event with our Cavriago project, where we are currently building two single-family passive houses: our construction site is going to be open to the public on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th.
Trends in Ceramics at CERSAIE 2013 (Bologna, Italy) | Houzz
Larger, thinner, and lighter. Textured, patterned, and combined. The overwhelming feeling from this year’s edition of CERSAIE Bologna was that the ceramics industry is successfully launching this versatile material into place as a sustainable, cost-effective, technologically superior, and aesthetically pliable substitute for many other traditional building materials.
Students from Boston Architectural College visit to discuss sustainability in Reggio Emilia
Last Thursday we had the pleasure of hosting a group of students from Boston Architectural College for a day of site visits and discussions about the ways in which modern and sustainable construction techniques are making their way into the traditional setting of rural Italy.
Overview of the 3rd International Green Roof Conference in Hamburg, Germany.
No one can argue that the green roof industry is still in an “experimental” phase. Speaker after speaker proved this to be true in the three days of excursions and presentations in and around Hamburg two weeks ago.
While there was far too much information exchanged to repeat in detail, I thought I would mention just a couple of general topics of discussion that came out of this excellent conference.
Residential architecture on a Texan scale: drawing inspiration from the 2012 AIA Dallas Home Tour
On my most recent visit to my hometown of Dallas, Texas, I was lucky enough to attend a home tour organized by the Dallas chapter of the The American Institute of Architects (AIA).
After living here in Italy for almost 5 years, I had almost forgotten how true it is that everything really is bigger in Texas. In a place where horizontal space is taken for granted, most of these homes boasted large walk-in closets and bathrooms larger than an average Italian kitchen. In a cubic volume that, here in Italy, would be split into three units, these homes have double (and sometimes triple) height ceilings and massive expanses of open floor.
While it should be noted that many of them were designed by/for industry professionals as their own homes, I think it gave me a fairly accurate overview of some of the design trends for upscale residential architecture in Dallas. Hopefully some of these design details can be translated back into our work here in Italy, even if at a smaller scale.
(photo credits: Life of an Architect – a fantastic blog I found after meeting the architect/owner of the last residence photographed here)
Lindhurst Avenue Residence, designed by Wernerfield
Lake Edge Drive Residence designed by ZERO3
Coronado Avenue Residence designed by Maestri LLC
Prospect Avenue Residence designed by Nimmo American Studio
Caruth Boulevard Residence designed by Tom Reisenbichler
West Mockingbird Lane Residence designed by Victor Sidy
Shorecrest Drive Residence designed by Smitharc Architects
Horseshoe Trail Residence by Bernbaum Magadini Architects
Emu Architects at Casa e Tavola 2012 (‘Home and Table’ expo) in Reggio Emilia
After the success of our collaborative stand with Octopus Lab Project at the ‘Salone del Mobile’ (furniture expo) in Parma last winter, we decided to repeat the experience at the 2012 edition of Casa&Tavola (Home&Table) expo in Reggio Emilia.
From October 6th to 14th, we will be presenting several solutions for ecological home design and energy efficiency, for both residential renovations and new constructions. These include certifications, CasaClima and Casa Passiva (Passive House). Continue reading below…
our stand at Casa&Tavola 2012 – furnishings by Grozni 5
We will also be demonstrating building principles of both high-performance masonry structures, as well as wood constructions. Examples will be included from all phases of the construction process – from the preliminary design, to the architectural and construction design, all the way to the construction site and completion of works. Our studies include daylight simulations, two-dimensional calculations, and thermal bridge calculations.
As far as ecologically sensitive building materials, we will have examples at our stand of several products that we use on a regular basis: cork, wood fiber, hemp fiber, other natural fibers, recycled cellulose, sheep’s wool, clay plasters, calcium silicate, cellular glass, and many others. We will also be showing some cork-wood doors and high-performance mechanical ventilation systems with heat recovery and pollen filters.
We will be happy to answer any questions about the use of these materials in home design.
Again, we will be working in collaboration with Grozni 5 (part of Octopus Lab Project), who will be furnishing our stand with a range of eco-furniture made from recycled materials.
Please come visit us from October 6th to 14th in the center of Pavilion C, at Stand 18-19.
For more information, please visit the Casa&Tavola website.
You are also welcome to join our public Facebook event – ‘Emu Architetti a Casa e Tavola 2012’.
Fuorisalone Milano 2012: Wrap Spaces – our favorite find!
My favorite Fuorisalone find was definitely Wrap Spaces from the Netherlands. They have a little show room located on Via Tortona – just follow the neon orange arrows to find it. The concept is one piece of furniture, from which you can open up a kitchen, an office, or a living room set. Aside from a place to actually set yourself down, it includes everything you need for a basic house… all in one space. If you combined it with a futon or sofa-bed, you’d have everything except the bathroom in one space that changes throughout the day.
“If you want breakfast in bed, then sleep in the kitchen.” -Wrap Spaces
I was clearly not the only one to find them interesting, as you can tell by my horrible photo. There were so many people crammed into the showroom that it was almost impossible to see the piece of furniture. There were a couple of staff attempting to conduct little tours, and naively assuming that no one would touch their prototype without asking. It’s their first time at the Salone, so it’s understandable.
You can see much more on their website, which is still in the pre-launch stage.
Fuorisalone Milano 2012: the Brera Design District – Miyazaki Chairs, HomeLess Design Network, and the Austrian Design Expo
While I did not by any means get to see the entire Brera district during my short stay in Milan, I did run into the following interesting displays which I would recommend to anyone heading in that direction:
The Miyazaki Chair Factory from Japan has their first exhibition at Milan’s Design Week, tucked away on a little back street in the Brera district – Via Ciovasso, near the intersection of Via Brera and Via dell’Orso. Not only were their chairs gorgeous, they were incredibly comfortable as well.
The HomeLess ‘home with less’ design network on the same street had a very interesting collection of products by individual designers, my favorite of which were The Corner Ladder (a ladder that collapses into one vertical piece), the Micol lamps (very graceful wooden and polycarbonate lamps designed by Cristiano Mino), and wooden products by London Green Wood (a community group that runs courses on working with locally sourced timber using traditional hand tools).
The Austrian design showroom, designed by Pudelskern, housed many interesting Austrian designs including the ‘Rock and Roll’ table by Team7 and the Tischbett Tavoletto by Georg Gressenbauer and Pia Meisl.
Fuorisalone Milano 2012: temporary street art – The Pothole Gardener and more
These were only three of the many examples of fun street art that I noticed popping up around Milan during Design Week:
- The first is a paper cut-out hand grasping onto a pole in the metro car.
- The second is the only one I can attribute to anyone in particular. It is a mini installation by an Australian, self-proclaimed ‘Guerrilla Gardener’ who calls himself ‘The Pothole Gardener’. He was commissioned by Lancia to install these “little moments of happiness” in potholes all over the city for Design Week. I’ll embed an interesting video with him from YouTube below. Here’s Lancia’s Flickr stream as well. This particular pothole garden was on Via Tortona.
- The third was this fantastic performance artist who had situated himself at the base of the stair overpass that goes from Porta Geova over to Via Tortona and the design district there. He was selling freshly packaged cigarette butts for a very decent price.
