Convert

FADU-UDELAR

Project idea

GENERAL IDEA
From the conception of an idea to the moment of end of the construction an architectural project goes through constant adjustments in all its stages, considering in each one of them a more integral vision than in previous instances and successively. However, when arriving at the point of construction a limit is reached in which the intangible becomes material and the adjustments are reduced tending to disappear. This work arises from an idea that mutates from that concept of adjustment but, for that matter, applied to an existing architecture in a reality and not to the fiction of a project existing only on paper.
In a historical moment in which the indeterminate becomes more relevant than ever, architecture should not seek perfect, deterministic and closed systems in which each aspect is solved for the entire period of its useful life but incorporate vectors that are capable of integrating possibilities. In this sense, uncertainty is a challenge but also a potential.
The discipline oscillates thus, between the fiction and the reality. It starts at the uncertain, actions are proposed as adding indeterminacy to the concrete, absorb mutations and promote them, generate spaces of opportunity, convert and create points of inflection and multiply possibilities in that architecture that exists in a reality to which it no longer belongs.
WORK OBJECTIVES
On the one hand, this work aims to address the reflection raised in an academic manner, through a theoretical research.
On the other hand, the technical development of a specific project that addresses the theorized issues is presented, applying them technically to a specific case study. Potentials were then raised that were born from the first sketches and were nourished from the inputs found during the various inquiries.
PROBLEMATIC
When faced with an architectural project, certain variables arise; user, program, technology, technique, aesthetics, context, on the basis of which a project idea and its subsequent adjustments are born. The weighting of each other, the need to respond to some more than others and other decisions in this regard are presented as part of the responsibility of the designer and within that process the uncertainty plays an important role.
Many of the objects that are produced tend to have a programmed obsolescence as their own characteristic; however, the way of producing architecture, since it is not a simple object of use, transcends its own functions and provokes sensations rooted in the human being such as identity, place or appropriation. Therefore, it is not expected that the tendency of architecture is to create simple consumer objects that are discarded as quickly as their environment of demands changes.
However, buildings are built from needs or opportunities and coexist with the reality that surrounds them, social, economic, urban, and beyond their psychosocial component would be ideal to respond efficiently to the needs of these realities throughout its useful life. In the pre-project and project stage the adaptation is considerably easy, however, the question is what happens when the premises with which an existing building was projected are put into crisis, when the realities with which they must live change and the limits of it in terms of convertibility and adaptation are overcome by these external factors.
Perhaps the answer lies in projecting decisions based on momentary reality but allowing constructions to extend their limits through external interventions, as external as the factors that produce the need for adaptation.

Project description

For this work, an intervention is proposed in the Positano building, an iconic construction of the modern movement, by architect Luis Gracía Pardo, located in the city of Montevideo, Uruguay.
The characteristics of Convert, the intervention, respond to its implantation and its environment, becoming a particular solution for a particular situation. Its architectural highlights can be grouped into three categories. First, it is an intervention in a heritage building, so it is completely external and eventually temporary, so as not to permanently modify the essence of the existing building. Second, it aims to be a space of indetermination, by which it incorporates mechanical movement, responsive design and artificial intelligence as its own technologies. Third, the intervention incorporates as an essential part of its spatiality an architectural skin that forms the totality of the vertical enclosures and encompasses in its essence all the atmospheres of the project.
Convert should be able to respond in the best way to each situation that the user and the environment pose for what is a dynamic, changing space, as a living organism that adapts. This premise is the trigger of the research that develops in the different stages of the work, research that focuses on creating, searching, finding, adapting and applying equipment, systems, materials, technologies and concepts to generate a unique space that is an architecture unique.
The complement: Convert complements the existing interior space by giving it an interface with the outside that it lacks, in order to generate a positive impact on its use. It can be a balcony, a semi-outdoor terrace, a hanging patio to which the interior space is turned over and therefore responds to it.
In this sense, Convert is an intervention that not only enriches the experience of architecture from the use of itself, but also helps to value existence from the complement.
The capsule: We live in a world of connections, networks, constant information that bombards us and invades every one of our senses. However, a vast amount of contemporary authors reflect on how this new way of life leads to alienate ourselves from the immediate reality to live in a virtual parallel world. It is easier and more common to know what the Pope said in his last visit to a third world country than to know the experiences of our neighbors, families, closer beings and even listen to our own thoughts. In this way, societies have become masses of information and data that fulfill the function of being the mirror and guide of the vast majority of our actions.
Nonetheless, the human being is a being not only social but in his own individuality, we can perform countless activities and tasks in groups even improving notoriously the results of them, but there are situations in which loneliness is fundamental. The personal reflection happens in the solitude and the confinement of the mind in itself and is a personal and unique exercise of each individual. In this sense, there are current trends that try to satisfy feelings of longing for a more reflective, introspective and individual life. It is no longer enough to close a door, move away to the countryside or travel to be invaded by a feeling of disconnection because the bombardment of data is constant and even addictive, forming part of our contemporary way of life.
If society and the current way of life are incapable of giving us the spaces we need, architecture could then be responsible for generating them through their materialization, propitiating the conditions to transform our relationship with the outside world. Convert proposes, in its capsule mode, a personal space isolated from the daily dwelling, a sanctuary to which to turn when there is a need to disconnect and think, to be with oneself.

Technical information

As an intervention that aims to be completely autonomous and self-sufficient, all the needs that Convert needs to make its space habitable, and reach the comfort levels, that the user demands must be resolved in its own conformation, without affecting the previous functioning of the existing building.
The living space is made up of two rigid plates and a dynamic skin that through different configurations create the situations and atmospheres of the project. The two plates make up the most rigid enclosures. Both plates are formed by a main structure of stainless steel metal profiles and secondary structures of the same material that are auxiliary to other systems that form part of the plate. They have hydrothermal insulation and contain the facilities that are necessary for lighting, heating, etc. In addition, they are responsible for generating electrical and thermal energy through solar panels.
Because everything must be able to be contained in a reduced thickness when Convert is closed and that the weight is an important factor to consider, each element is particularly designed to respond to the demands efficiently.
STRUCTURE
Being an intervention that is implemented in an existing building, the structural study of Convert can be divided into three parts. First, how much and in what way its implementation affects the structure of the building. Second, a fixed interface structure that connects both the existence and the intervention in order to promote implementation. Finally, the own structure of Convert that encompasses both the upper and lower plates and the two hydraulic systems that are responsible for the movement of the same.
CLIMATE
The appropriate use of natural resources of sunlight, ventilation and lighting of Convert's living space is carried out mainly through the interactive skin that surrounds it.
The building is exempt, so it receives sun on all sides. On the west facade, where Convert is implanted, the sun is throughout the afternoon shining year-round. Being a completely glazed facade, the intervention would only remove part of the lighting and sunlight to the interior spaces of the building under normal conditions.
For Convert, the sunning of three of its facades is an advantage in the cold season but also a situation to control in the warm season seeking to avoid unwanted thermal gains. It is also important to assess the sunlight in horizontal planes by the radiation gains for the generation of electrical energy and heating of water for heating.
Natural ventilation will be promoted by controlling the opening of the skin, taking advantage of the height and exposure of the intervention to the winds. It is proposed that, depending on the facades that the user opens or closes, two types of ventilation will be generated: crossed or passive that will be associated with the total behavior of the skin but mainly with the opening systems of the same.
ARTIFICIAL LIGHTING
The main characteristics of Convert are its versatility as a space and its ability to interact with the environment and the user. In this line, the lighting project must be able to respond to the different situations that are carried out in the intervention. Different lighting scenarios are then studied and it is concluded that the best installation is one that is capable of moving and interacting with the needs of each user at all times.
An installation is proposed that can reach different and variable light levels, besides accompanying the movement and dynamism of the activities that are carried out within the intervention.
ENERGY
The challenge of autonomous intervention is clearly reflected in the choice of the source of energy. In this sense, Convert does not connect to the building's electrical network, but is completely alien to it, working completely with generated and accumulated energy on his own structure.
The electrical network of Convert aims to be simple and clear. It is generated, accumulated and used according to the needs established a priori by the equipment installed and by the environment choices that the user and the environment establish.
In the first instance, all the energy is generated in photovoltaic panels, which transform part of the solar energy in the form of radiation into continuous electrical energy. This energy is transported to one of the support frames in which the charge regulator and the battery bank are located where the energy accumulates for later distribution. Since the energy is generated as continuous and the consumption is in alternate, the installation has an inverter prior to the board.
Internally, the energy is distributed in three circuits: the first for the installation of heating and electrical outlets, the second for lighting and the general system of sensors and safety, and the third for the motor and pumping system of the hydraulic installation in charge of the opening, closure and movement of the entire intervention.
HEATING
The case of the cold season is considered the most compromised due to the relatively low tightness of the skin and to the exposure of Convert to more aggressive environmental factors, mainly South-facing winds. At the same time, it is intended to take advantage of the solar exposure to which the intervention will be subjected not only to generate electrical energy but also to help the thermal comfort of the space. In this way, we look for a system that is capable of heating the environment using the available solar thermal energy and user-friendly equipment and the atmospheres Convert intends to generate.
Through a mixed solar collector that generates both thermal and photovoltaic energy, the water is heated, which then goes down through conduits and passes through a heat exchanger in fan coil type equipment that is embedded in the lower plate of the intervention. The water recirculates whenever the system is turned on in order to generate constant heat and as long as it has a suitable temperature to heat the environment. It is worth noting that for the system to work, there must be solar radiation since there will not be auxiliary thermal equipment.
SKIN
The skin, or skins, are in charge of converting a unique architectural space. They do not simply make up the vertical enclosure of a living space, but they are interactive with the user and the environment, generating the moments of the project.
It is proposed as a conceptual project for which guidelines are described and research associated material, technical and theoretical conformations to create more than a resolved skin in its entirety, a fiction, a story with an uncertain, open end. In this way, the skin of Convert is one and it is several at the same time, translucent and opaque, hermetic and open, it grants privacy and allows visuals, interacts with its environment and with the user, is dynamic and changing and is also static and rigid if it proposes.
The skin is not just the enclosure, it is not just the facades, nor the filter with the exterior, it is not simply aesthetic or constructive: it is the vector of the perceptions of the project from the user and from himself.
In functional matters, the guidelines to follow regarding the conformation of the device address the requirements of the skin. In that sense, the folding capacity is a mandatory condition, as well as the movement and the associated material flexibility. In addition, it is clear that the skin of Convert will be responsible for much of the climate performance of the intervention, so it should be able to respond to its environment in matters related to temperature, solar radiation, winds, precipitation, etc. In third place, when forming the totality of the vertical enclosures, it must be able to respond to its user by promoting the atmospheres that it requires, controlling in this way the levels of privacy, luminosity, interaction with the existing building and with its immediate surroundings, among other conditions.