“No house should ever be on a hill or on anything, it should be of the hill, belonging to it. Hill and House should live together each the happier for the other.”

Frank Lloyd Wright

Design Concept

The proposed scheme composes of 3 fundamental characteristic, the ‘Buildings’, the ‘Green Street’ and the ‘Park’, merging with a unifying element the ‘public social park’. Developing on the sentiment of ‘water and caves’ that exist in the area, we created a simple sketch illustrating the excavating of soil, and this movement would generate the ‘Topos’ where the ‘Park’ and ‘Buildings’ would be located within. Although fused together, these functions are perfectly recognizable.

A Symbol of Sustainability

The aim for designing a near zero emission building in Spain was a moral duty to us. When you think of Spain you immediately think of the great history in harnessing sustainable energy, additionally its light and sea.

‘You can feel the sun and sense its wind’.

The buildings and public park had to take advantage of all the natural sustainable resources available to the site and incorporate them within the design. The proposal will take advantage of emerging PV technology, such as the ‘Tesla Power wall’ providing 90% of the buildings energy along with charging points for residents cars located at basement level.

Urban Icon

The obvious challenge in designing a series of 7 residential houses, is complement the surrounding context, while at the same time the scheme must be recognizable, it must become a Urban Icon representing ‘White Sails’ into the third millennium.

The ‘Energy Fields’

One of the scheme notable characteristics, is the presence of a light floating ‘Energy Field’ soaring over the buildings. This covering is not designed to protect the buildings from atmospheric agents, the flying ‘carpet/ energy field’ is in fact a captor of solar energy. This very light structure will be covered with very efficient photovoltaic panels. Our aim is to provide sufficient surface of PV panels to produce the energy necessary to charge the buildings ‘Tesla Powerwalls’ with back up from the CHP unit located at basement level when required.

​The ‘Energy Field’ will be a strong visual presence, important to identify the scheme also as an Urban Icon. The ‘Energy Field’ is going to be an iconic element, a symbol of sustainability, which identifies the development from afar.

A ‘Zero’ emission building.

The project aims is to create as close to a ‘zero emission building’. At present solar energy represents the best resource, along with the addition of urban wind turbines located within the public park, contributing to the schemes overall sustainable energy collection residing in ‘Tesla Power Wall’. If not consumed by the proposed scheme the additional store energy will be transferred to the wider community, acting like community energy collector and distributor. Additionally we aim to take advantage of the rain water harvesting techniques by collecting rain water in a 45m3 attenuation tank at Basement Level and reusing as ‘grey water’ for domestic flushing and gardening throughout the scheme.