GREEN TECH HUB

Letícia Reis • Laís Rodrigues

The project has the purpose of idealising a sustainable building accessible to the public, offering good amount of leisure and outdoor spaces, but not limiting private areas for the researchers and their specific work spaces. The first and main decision about the building was to utilise shipping containers, applying then the ‘Reusing’ concept, considering the hierarchy of waste management as expressed in the 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). That way, a second useful lifecycle is introduced for this element, that is no longer suitable for its original purpose of carrying goods. Moreover, it’s available in the surroundings of the site. This influences the structure and the volume of the project, resulting in an extreme flexible structure which can easily be decreased or increased. The volume is characterised by pure forms stacked in two directions in order to be self-supporting and creating many voids throughout the building, resulting in terraces used as meeting spaces and view points. The containers are combined with steel structured areas on the research part of the complex and metallic walkaways on the living part. The green areas are concentrated mainly where the living and leisure
areas are located, allowing open space on the research part to enable an easy expansion in the future. The interior of the building has a metallic finish, creating a similar industrial atmosphere as well as the exterior. The living units are composed by one or two containers, creating the concept of living with just the necessary space. Many leisure containers are spread in the building, with different types of use. The labs are designed to fit into 3 or 4 blocks of containers, removing small parts of the internal walls. Finally, we believe that the use of containers for this project fits extremely, and facilitates the construction process and results in a possible expansion of the labs and living units, when necessary in the future, which we consider to be one of the main goals of this task.

Wintersemester 2020/2021
Masterstudio
Riewe, Minghel