In It's Not Easy Being Green, Curbed pulls back the curtain on cutting-edge, environmentally friendly design, from urban passive houses to green tweaks on suburban living. Have a suggestion for an upcoming column? Pass it along.
As Alventosa Morell Arquitectes explains it, the Barcelona-based firm had quite the tall order with the GG House. "Is it possible," they ask, "to build a home that completely adapts to its surrounding landscape of mountains and greenery, in just four months? Is it possible to heat a detached house located in the Montseny Landscape, with only a single one-kW radiator, used two hours a day in the winter," a home that was also build "as inexpensive as possible?" Of course, these aren't purely hypothetical quandaries; we're left to assume that the firm made good on all of them with the home they created by connecting six wooden modules with a long, glass-walled hallway. What can be said with confidence is that the final product is one of the chicest shades of green building out there.
As AMA explains, the modules were installed "without the need for later finishing fieldwork" due to the fact that they "were flexible enough to adapt to the morphology of the site," and built following a "bioclimatic study" that determined "the strategies to follow in the design, in order to improve the dwelling's comfort and to achieve the energy demands in order to be a passive house." The glassy "interstitial spaces" between the modules "provide the interior with flexibility and become a solar light collector in winter," while "condensation was prevented by using sweating materials, to have a healthy house." And we all know that a healthy house is a happy house. Head to Architizer for more on the project, and this way for a similar design done in red brick.
· Casa GG [Architizer]
· It's Not Easy Being Green archives [Curbed National]
· This Red-Brick Compound Puts Glassy Moderns to Shame [Curbed National]
· All Barcelona coverage [Curbed National]