WASP introduces a new -house- idea, a 3d printed house totally realised trhough digital fabrication. It’s the EREMO project: a new adventure where unexplored projet and executive fields melt in the WASP technology.
WASP‘s aim has always been to work at the society-service, ie: looking for eco-friendly solutions to the human primary needs, optimizing the environmental, energetic, technological or human available resources. WASP has been testing materials and updated technologies for several months in order to set up a new living system, starting from the 3D printing.
Thanks to the gathered experience, with the 3d printer BigDelta WASP 12MT experimentation, in continuos improvement, Eremo has been created, a versatile and consistent model of refuge with an environmental impact near zero thanks to the use of local materials and of machinary of speed prototyping or at numerical control. With the help of the engineering and of the virtual construction, nowadays it’s possible to optimize the area-resources efficiency and spare on the production costs.
The research of a bond between technology and behaviour has brought to this “architectural archetype”, result of a multidisciplinary investigation project, around which several fields converge and turn: renewable energies, furniture design, Hydroponic ressearch, vertical garden plantations. All these fields make progress in parallel, to converge in a house model based on self-production, reproducibility and scalability basis.
Eremo is a model of “inactive” architecture, because is able to sutisfy most of the energetic needs throght inactive apparatus, able to produce energy instead of using it. A house model that sets man free from debt and that does not pollute. This architectural model, being built with natural materials taken from the origin area and that can be used again or ricyclable at its life-end, is wasteless.
MIXED BUILDING TECNIQUE
The Engineering process and the digital fabrication allow to predict, during the design phase, multiple variables regarding the internal and the external structure of the building. It is possible to:
- operate on the thermic or acoustic insulation of the walls;
- provide previously a location where to put the plant design (for example electric cables) inside the walls;
- know in advance where to locate an eventual internal wood structure ;
- plan a self-standing and earthquake proof configuration.
The experimentation process regarding the composition of the material is a fundamental step for a good result. To realize the walls an LDM technology has been used, with a mixture of simple materials: dirt, water and straw.
COB houses have an high thermal inertia, a good endurance burning and are antiseismic. When sand and lime are added, the walls are more breathable and they keep a completely natural composition.
PROPERTY OF MATERIALS
Dirt
It has a very good thermal inertia which garantees in summer cool space and hot one in winter.
It works like an heat accumulator: it gets warm and cold slowly, therefore it makes a phase displacement of 12 hours up, between the internal and the external walls (it changes in relation to temperature, climatic areas and thickness of the wall). Dirt is a very good acoustic insulating material (a wall of 14,3 cm plastered with clay, allows an insonorization of 43 dB).
It has a very good resistance to fire , since in case of blaze it is subjected to the firing process. Good resistance to earthquakes, too. Furthermore, dirt regulates the humidity in the air since it absorbs the water in the air to release it when the weather is dry; in this way it keeps the percentage of humidity stable during night and day and in the different seasons.
Since this material is really breathable, it allows the transfer of the water vapour from the inside to the outside, avoiding the mould growth. It absorbs harmful substances, smells and smoke, purifying the air with a completely natural process.
Straw
Very good thermal insulating and noise-absorbing material. If mixed with other breathable materials like dirt and lime, this property is facilitated, so it prevents the mould growth and the persistence of the humidity inside the walls.
Straw makes dirt lighter, thus it improves the resistance to earthquake and it makes the structure more flexible, allowing the vibrations to be absorbed, reducing structural failures.
Lime and sand
These inert materials give dimensional stability to dirt, reducing the shrinking of the material during the exsiccation. Moreover, they have the function of making the mixture more uniform. They contribute to regulate the humidity of the air.
In particular, thanks to lime it is possible to have a chemical process called carbonation: the wet and slacked lime (hydrated calcium Ca(OH)2), drying releases water and absorbs carbon dioxide(CO2) from the air, changing its structure in calcium carbonate. Lime, through carbonation, becomes a mineral comparable to stone before the firing process.