\nText: Raluca Munteanu<\/p>\n
The project started in 2016 and followed a long path that taught much to all of us working on it. The house is in a recently expanded area in the town of Otopeni, where over the last decades arable land was included in the town limits, plotted and built with individual site housing. Although the street structure is far from an example of comfortable and sustainable urban development, as the resulting streets are narrow and often dead ends, the land where the Sunny House was built has a regular and well-proportioned shape (20 x 24 m).<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n The design theme was unusual from the start, in the context of the local architecture and development. The clients’ desires were many and seemed very difficult to crowd within the site conditions: a one-storey house (for a young family), with maximum energy efficiency (at passive house standard), all the land might be used as an edible garden, and a greenhouse that should provide both a small crop in the cold season, and a relaxation spot at all times.<\/p>\n In order to reduce the energy consumption to a maximum, it was important for us to use the southern side as well as possible, passively using solar power, according to the general layout principles for buildings with very low consumption. As far as the Sunny House was concerned, the south is on the left side, with neighbours who had already built their house at a decent distance, which allowed the use of the land between the two buildings as the main area of the edible garden. But the greenhouse would not fit the plot while observing the mandatory urbanism receding planes and without affecting the ground floor’s living spaces.<\/p>\n The building needed a roof anyway, and the attic space resulted in most of the studied variants was a generous one. The idea was thus born that the entire roof should become a greenhouse, so the envelope was only partially opaque (covered in grooved flat plate) to the north, and mostly transparent (cellular polycarbonate).<\/p>\n *Greenhouse plan (to be completed)<\/em><\/span> <\/p>\n The ground floor dwelling is designed with a central space (the living room), leading to the rest of the rooms. The planimetric organization, inspired from the patio house archetype, uses the living room both as a central living space (a place to cook, to dine, and to talk), and as the interior open-air space leading to the resting chambers. The central room naturally extends onto the outside garden on the southern side, but also has a visual connection to the greenhouse, with a skylight embedded in the greenhouse’s flooring. Nevertheless, the greenhouse has outside access, as the two levels of the house have different energy performance levels and independent systems of providing the necessary interior comfort.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ground floor dwelling was designed, built and finally certified as a plus passive building, according to the international standard of the Passive House Institute in Darmstadt. The designed details pay increased attention to the house’s tightness, to thermal insulation gauges and to the quality of closing materials used (mineral wool, exterior fittings, etc.).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Another special characteristic of the project is the full wooden structure: the CLT (cross laminated timber) ground floor, where the material is also left apparent in many areas (both in the walls, and also on the ceiling), while the attic greenhouse is made of laminated wooden frames, without intermediary supports. A free space is thus created in the greenhouse, suitable for flexible usage. Although not yet fully set up, the greenhouse concept suggests thematic areas, created through mobile flower-box modules – an area for luxuriant plants, one for Mediterranean plants, one for climbing plants, a lounge area.<\/p>\n The greenhouse’s great challenge is to provide as good a ventilation as possible in summertime, when the space can overheat. The windows placed on opposing sides (north-south) provide a minimum of natural ventilation, but according to the observations made after closing the space with polycarbonate, a mechanic ventilation and a shadowing system are also needed.<\/p>\n The house’s design and execution included another pioneering element, a partially successful experiment: an association with other homeowners who were carrying out similar projects in order to optimize costs, through joint orders for materials or the exchange of building crews by various stages and works. It just so happened that the design team received requests for similar projects over the same period of time (passive CLT houses), on neighbouring plots (in Otopeni). Aware of Germany’s association system (Baugruppe), where owners carry out real estate projects, customized according to the end customer’s needs and with optimized costs, we told the beneficiaries of this idea, and thus Cooperativa de Case (The House Collective) was born. Two of the clients of these similar projects, with almost neighbouring plots, joined forces during design and execution.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Engineer: Gravity, earthquake, energies<\/strong> I met Mihaela and Costin at about the same time as I did Andreea and Viorel, their neighbours on a nearby plot. They didn’t know each other, but both families wanted a CLT passive house, and they had come heavily documented, having visited many fairs and with whole bags of brochures, catalogues and material samples. After the first discussions, I saw they had nearby plots, I introduced them and we started working together at the #casacusoare (Sunny House) and the #casacucireș (Cherry-Tree House), in what we called back then Cooperative de Case (The House Collective).<\/p>\n Besides the desire of having a comfortable and energy-efficient house, Mihaela and Costin wanted an entire greenhouse floor, an open space, with complete opening at structure level, closed with polycarbonate, full of carts of dirt, where they could grow the various plants which were to be moved around in the greenhouse, according to the need for sun and light along time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n But in the fight with gravity and earthquakes, this kind of meant:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"DCIM100MEDIADJI_0736.JPG\"](\"https:\/\/e-zeppelin.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/02_AB_casacusoare_drona_vecinatati3.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>*Ground floor plan:<\/em><\/span>
\n1.Access. 2. Living. 3. Kitchen. 4. Dining. 5. Bedroom. 6. Dressing. 7. Toilet. 8. Bathroom. 9. Fitness\/bedroom. 10. Study\/Bedroom. 11. Bathroom. 12. Pantry. 13. Technical room. 14. Terrace. 15. Grill. 16. Tool storage. 17. Monte-charge<\/em><\/span>
\na. Orchard. b. Vegetable garden with organically disposed layers. c. Low limit, planted with perennial plantss and graminea. d. Garden with special trees and shrubs. e. ZParking area integrated into the greenery<\/em> <\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1. Exterior acces stairway. 2. Monte-charge. 3. Wardrobe. 4. Low plants area. 5. Lounge\/cinema. 6. Kitchen. 7. Sofa and brassero area. 8. Skylight. 9. Citrics area. 10. Tree\/jungle area. 11. Sanitary<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>*Cross section<\/span>
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\nText: Marius Șoflete<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n