Daylight in Buildings

The Iris house

Students

Quynh Nhu Luong, Thao Vy Nguyen, Mai Thanh TRAN

Teachers

milena stefanova

School

Ecole nationale supérieure d' Architecture de Grenoble

Country

France

The Iris house
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Project Description

The 21st century is considered as the digital era as we have witnessed the birth of many new hi-techs. Along with all these advanced technologies, we have to cope with different problems such as climate change and pollution due to the fast pace of urbanization. We need to find a solution for a future life when environmental conditions could be crucial. On one hand, we know that in severe regions like in the poles or deserts, underground living could be very beneficial to fight against the extreme heat and cold. Living underground is becoming a new tendency to stop the damage to our ecosystem for the following reasons. The foremost advantage is to decrease our impact on the environment. Since an underground house offers a nearly constant interior temperature thanks to thermal insulation, our carbon footprint from using energy could be greatly reduced. The second benefit from underground dwellings is the unobstructive presence in the surrounding landscape. In the future, with a growing population, space saving can become a key factor in construction and architecture. With this type of living, we could not only save space but also protect the beauty of the landscape in different areas. On the other hand, the core of this project is the sun which provides energy for our building. The sun is not only a green source of energy but also an eternal one, that is why it could be considered as the energy source for the future. With the goal of fully and only using solar energy, we have implemented a solar panel system on the roof. This intelligent system is programmed to automatically follow the sun during different periods throughout the day, whose mechanism is based on the principle of sunflowers. Besides, this system has another mechanism which provides shadow to the interior space since our solar panels are facing the sun. The energy collected from these panels can then be used for daily activities such as cooking, lighting in the night, etc. Moreover, this model is also equipped with a ventilation system which allows the heat transfer and airflow. Finally, the factor of recovery has the most important role in this project that we want to focus on. Hence, we want to “bring back” our environment which we used to have before through underground living. As mentioned above, underground houses reduce human footprint and presence in the environment.