Project Entry 2017 for North America
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Prototype for an evaporative roof for radiant cooling, Cherry Valley, CA, USA
Atmospheres of climate: Harnessing the absorption and transmission properties of water, which mirror that of low-E glass, the proposal allows light in the visible spectrum to provide natural daylighting while blocking ultraviolet and infrared radiation. A unique quality of light would be achieved, the gentle movement of the water above transmitting the atmosphere of the day outside within and allowing the expression of the temporal nature of climate.
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Prototype for a evaporative roof for radiant cooling, Cherry Valley, CA, USA
Reconsidering comfort: An evaporating layer of water on the roof approaches a wet bulb temperature of 12°C (a typical roof reaches 60-100°C), mitigating the albedo effect. Ambient indoor temperature is approx. 50 % radiant heat from surface radiation and 50 % air temperature. Interior space with a view factor to the roof only would be fully climatized. With an indoor air temperature of 25°C, a mean radiant temperature of roof and floor of 18.5°C, the ambient indoor temperature of 21°C is achieved.
Last updated: March 21, 2017 Princeton, NJ, USA
An integrated approach to energy, climate & aesthetics
The project considers the relationship between energy infrastructures and the spaces they serve, developing an integrated solution that not only engenders efficiencies but proposes a new methodology for the construction of atmosphere. The modernization and mechanization of architecture over the course of the 20th century has resulted in complex buildings systems, progressively removed from the spatial experience and obtuse to the user. This separation of occupant and system accounts in part for the misuse of energy resources within the built environment today. Through the establishment of a climatic device that modifies both interior comfort and spatial experience, linking to “Progress” and “Place” the proposal seeks to conceptualize a new way of producing sustainable building systems.
Reconsidering the production of interior comfort
At the heart of the project is the desire to harness the latent potential of natural systems, in place of the ever- increasing use of energy demanding mechanical systems, connecting to the target of “Planet”. Through understanding the evaporative properties of water in the context of the psychometric chart and creatively interpreted in the design of a passive building system, the project strives to provoke new directions and methodologies for the construction of climate. In analogue with the target of “People”, the project through its use of radiant cooling (which does not alter air temperature but modifies its perception) also questions our assumptions of how comfort is created and indeed what comfort is.
Energy infrastructures as landscape
Architecture’s ever-increasing reliance on secondary infrastructures of scale renders explicit a growing disjunction of needs, resources and design. This leads to a necessary reevaluation of our programmatic, climatic and energetic relationships. Speculating on the complete elimination of the requirement for a secondary infrastructural architecture, the case study shows that when considered at scale the prototype would act an independent infrastructure – the energy needs of the total floor area would be met within the architecture itself, using a volume of water comparable in magnitude as that of a cooling tower constructed to serve that same area. Furthermore, the case study considers a climatic envelope deployed as a beautiful, shimmering moonlike landscape, linking “Planet” and “Place”.