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Atmospheric Landscape - Villa for 500 Hippies in Vicenza

Part 1 Project 2013
Cristina Hormaechea Arias
CEU San Pablo University | Spain
The expression of Hippies lifestyle has an order of chaos based on the nomadism, nudism, and the relation of commune. Function and form arise in a spontaneous way based on climate and atmosphere, which take to a functional interpretation of space. For it there are appealed as principal materials to the density of the air, quantity of light and humidity, natural and changeable elements. It has a need to adapt to a change of program and function, in which every space is defined in function to the others, creating a flexible program with constant invisible threshold.

The climatology of Vicenza added to the needs and desires of the inhabitants, takes to a thermodynamic architecture implanted in the hillside of Villa Capra, supporting relation with it and being benefited of the slope to obtain a crossed ventilation in summer.

The project is based on a constant variation of quantity and pressure of air that creates an invisible landscape of atmospheres. A study of the needs of the hippies depending on the level of clothes, quantity of people or activity carried out, generates a variation of humidity, light and temperature that give place to specific dimensions.

Plant and section are based on the geometry of bubbles that generates a central core, which concentrates all the infrastructure that serves the four domes around it. These servant areas have the bathrooms and an underground machine room that generates heat and collects rainwater to supply it and create electricity. The served areas are covered with domes, supported on girders and metallic pilars, which change the thickness and number of layers depending on the atmospheric needs. The enclosure also varies with awnings, tipping or with a double layer of plastic which contains air in order to create shade, ventilation or concentrate heat.

The floor plan is modulated by platforms that sink and rise to get advantage of soil properties. Different layers with network provides water, heat, energy and ventilation thanks to the use of polypropylene caissons that allow to have an air chamber with enough mass of concrete as to turn these galleries into hypocausts.


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2013
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