The Maison Glacé project – thanks to which the Studio won in the Visioning category of the Archmarathon Awards in Miami – is an important design response to the theme of sustainability, a reflection on how to design by transforming the “problem” into a solution and the peculiarities into instruments characterizing the structure. The theme of energy savings is at the center of architectural works, but is often limited to addressing the question by applying previously validated rules and choosing materials that can easily be controlled.
Maison Glacé is an experiment that seeks to connect the building to the territory through what most greatly characterizes the latter: the cold. The cold – the ice – is used to protect from the cold. Maison Glacé is a single-family house with guest house annex that will be protected from the sharp cold and freezing winds caused by its proximity to Lake Ontario thanks to a crust of ice that will form in the first cold days, and that will protect the house throughout the winter.
A project that will soon be created, and that aims to become a “Case Study” in the construction of new housing solutions for the indigenous peoples who inhabit those regions of Canada characterized by very cold days throughout the year. The jury awarded the ELASTICOSPA+KFA project because it proposes an innovative, but at that same time viable solution, and because it takes into account the increasingly drastic and sudden climate changes. A reflection on how to design for the future, using lateral thinking, obtaining energetically sustainable structures. Source by ELASTICOSPA, images Courtesy of 54words.