Living Box – Prefabricated modular wood-house system - Part II - KEP energy Magazine - KEP energy

Living Box – Prefabricated modular wood-house system

English translation from a paper published in 'Bollettino degli Ingegneri n. 6/2016 pp. 3-18'

Introduction

The availability of simple and versatile housing systems is becoming progressively a necessity, due to the frequency and intensity growth of occurrences that put in crisis the traditional housing concepts. Natural disaster, extreme weather events, migrations and urbanization are widespread phenomena, which must be faced rapidly and through reversible solutions. That is, solutions that are able to adapt itself continuously to the phenomena variations. At the same time, the environmental requirements and the sustainable development issues impose that a generic housing system be built implementing the criteria of minimum impact regarding the materials and the energy consumption, the greenhouse gases emissions and, more generally, the overall Life-Cycle, whatever is its lifespan.

The “Sustainable Buildings” (SB) can be understood as complex socio-technical systems. The “Triple Bottom Line” (TBL) vision identifies the “sustainability” concept in the integration of three macroareas: environment, economy, society. Applying this vision, it is possible read the temporary housing concept as follows:

1) society: the housing system is specifically conceived for solve immediate population needs;

2) economy: the housing system is based on seriality and industrialization criteria, in order to minimize the costs of production, carrying, installation, etc…;

3) environment: the housing system is designed implementing energy efficiency criteria and it is built using low impact material, almost totally reusable and recyclable.

In this context originated the topic of the paper: define a temporary housing system framing it into a multi-disciplinary design vision, that is linking among them the architectural, structural and energy fields. The result is a prefabricated modular wood-house system, characterized from functional flexibility, construction quickness and energy efficiency.

The system has been called “Living Box”. This name wants highlight from the one hand the main system purpose, that is a living space, and from the other hand the reference system configuration, that is a “mounting box”.

The paper presents the results of a technical insight based on a master thesis dissertation, which has taken place in the University of Florence in 2014, into the master degree course in Building Engineering.