After its success at the international Solar Decathlon 2017 competition in Denver, USA, the NeighborHub is coming back to life at the smart living lab in Fribourg. The Swiss solar house, designed by the students and professors of four schools (EPFL, HEIA-FR, HEAD and UNIFR), is being rebuilt on the blueFACTORYsite. The NeighborHub offers alternatives that brings citizens together to encourage them to go towards a more sustainable future. It will open its doors to the public on 28 and 29 April 2018 and thematic visits will follow.
For more than 2 years, 250 students, including 43 solar decathletes present in Denver, 150 supervisors from the professional and academic sectors and nearly 50 partners will have participated in the Swiss Living Challenge project. They designed the solar house NeighborHub, winner of the international sustainable housing competition Solar Decathlon 2017, with 8 podiums out of 10 competitions, including 6 gold medals.
Now, the 70 tons of equipment needed for the reconstruction of the NeighborHub are back in Fribourg, after crossing the Atlantic in twelve containers. The building phase began in mid-February and is led by some of the supervisors and students who were in Denver. It will run for two months.
Ideally located in the innovation district of blueFACTORY, close to the smart living lab that gave birth to it, the solar community house will be a meeting place that brings the local residents together and imagine with them solutions to consume less and better. There will be tools and alternatives around seven levers of action: the use of renewable energies, mobility, water and waste management, food, biodiversity and the choice of materials. Visitors will benefit from advice, interactive activities and conferences on these themes, at the open doors scheduled on 28 and 29 April 2018, and on request.
Catherine De Wolf, postdoctoral researcher at the Structural Xploration Lab, has just co-edited the book "Embodied Carbon in Buildings | Measurement, Management, and Mitigation" (Springer, 2018), which provides a single-source reference for whole life embodied impacts of buildings. The comprehensive and persuasive text, written by over 50 invited experts from across the world, offers an indispensable resource both to newcomers and to established practitioners in the field. Ultimately it provides a persuasive argument as to why embodied impacts are an essential aspect of sustainable built environments.
The book is divided into four sections: measurement, including a strong emphasis on uncertainty analysis, as well as offering practical case studies of individual buildings and a comparison of materials; management, focusing in particular on the perspective of designers and contractors; mitigation, which identifies some specific design strategies as well as challenges; and finally global approaches, six chapters which describe in authoritative detail the ways in which the different regions of the world are tackling the issue.
On Saturday the Halle Blue of the blueFACTORY at the smart living lab in Fribourg welcomed over 200 people on the occasion of the certificate awarding ceremony of the robotics workshop, organised by the EPFL Science Outreach Department in cooperation with EPFL Fribourg and the « Centre fri-tic », which provided the IT-equipment.
The 24 girls and 24 boys aged 11 to 13 years attended from September to December 2017 in Fribourg the robotics workshop entlitled for the girls Les robots, c’est l’affaire des filles and Construire et programmer un robot for boys. The participants received their certificate from Mrs Anne-Claude Cosandey, Operational Director of the EPFL Fribourg Outpost, and Mrs Farnaz Moser-Boroumand, Director of the EPFL Science Outreach Department. After the official part, the participants showed their parents and relatives the robots they had programmed during the 11 weeks’ workshop.
The interest and the enthusiasm of parents and children as well as the quality of the projects realized during this course session very well illustrate the relevancy of such workshops, which provide an introduction to coding and robotics.
Could recovered materials play a key role in tomorrow’s civil engineering? EPFL researchers set out to answer that question by creating an easily demountable pavilion out of more than 200 reclaimed skis.
Is there a middle road between producing new materials and recycling them? You bet – reusing them! Researchers at the smart living lab in Fribourg came up with a slightly off-the-wall project based on the idea that the stuff we throw away could be the makings of sustainable construction. Guided by this concept, the researchers collected hundreds of old skis, whose mechanical properties proved ideal for building a collapsible pavilion.
"In the construction industry, talk about sustainable building usually revolves around insulation, energy efficiency, materials, recycling and biodegradation,” says Corentin Fivet, who heads EPFL’s Structural Xploration Laboratory (SXL). “But recycling is expensive and biodegradation is not always a feasible option. Another way to avoid producing new materials and use less energy is to repurpose materials as they are."
We need more research on the topic before ensuring its feasibility. But it could, for example, be paired with other existing building methods. Two examples are prefabrication and nomad architecture which uses support structures that can be repeatedly assembled and disassembled. “In our lab, we’re focusing on the support structures used for buildings because conventional structures – between their foundations and roofs – account for most of the eventual waste.”
Elastic gridshell After some trial and error with various materials – fishing rods came up short in terms of their mechanical properties and supply – they settled on skis. Like many other types of sports equipment, skis are technological wonders. Fivet says: “Skis typically bring together extensive technical refinements and, even if they’ve outlived their original purpose, should be reused.”
One aspect of the project was to determine the structural potential of skis for their new purpose. They had to be flexible in one direction and rigid in the other. They also had to be able to withstand applied loads and perform consistently over time.
“We tested all types of skis – downhill, slalom, cross-country and freeride – and placed them at strategic points of the pavilion depending on their properties,” says Sofia Colabella, another researcher on the project. “Skis, which are made from high-tech materials, turned out to be almost better than wood, which is more commonly used in this type of structure.”
Colabella specializes in elastic gridshells, which are as flexible as metallic netting but become as stiff as a shell when fastened in place. The trick lies in arranging the individual components in two directions, so that they become a very flexible grid of rectangles. The grid is first built flat on the ground, and then the edges of the grid are pulled in. Because the individual modules are flexible, the center of the grid consequently arches upward. Once the structure has obtained its final shape, it is held in place by attaching other components diagonally in certain spots. This makes it stable and stiff. This structure can be used to cover a large area with small components, and it doesn’t require complicated tools or a formwork.
Headed for Lyon this summer The researchers’ nomad pavilion is made out of 210 skis and held in place by 300 bolts – less than a hundred of which are needed for the reassembly. This project was selected for the Biennale Architecture Lyon, where it will be on display starting this June. The researchers hope to be able to set up their pavilion in different, popular areas of the city over the course of the event.
“Our goal isn’t to make buildings out of skis. It’s to show that we can use uncontrolled and uncontrollable materials with a sufficient level of confidence in the structure’s safety and performance. It’s an exercise, a manifesto, that shows there are some interesting things to be done in this relatively unexplored field,” says Fivet.
Corentin Fivet (project investigator), Sofia Colabella (gridshell designer and worksite manager), Bernardino D'Amico (engineering consultant), Claude-Alain Jacot (construction), Jan Brütting (construction), Valeria Didonna (construction), Endrit Hoxha (Life-cycle analysis)
