Unboxed - 100% recycable prefab wooden house?

The project was made for the "Designing your future" competition organized by italian building company Marlegno, in 2014. The main goal was to design a cutting edge wooden prefab house, with eco-sustainability criteria and recyclability.
The house is made up of few basic modular elements. By combining them one can get different layout solutions. The elements are complete with all finishes and the thermal bridges are absent, because the insulating layer is never interrupted. All the elements are recyclable. The foundation is made of steel and is lighter, the excavation is not essential. Each room of the house is in visual and sensorial contact with the environmental, specially for the glazed entrance/corridor in the middle.
All the solutions studied, and in particular the 100 sqm version, with a clear division between the living area and sleeping area, where the visual and sensory relationship with the natural environment is enhanced both by the large windows of the modules, and the corridor / glazed entrance: a real passage in the nature, able to re-establish the contact with the surrounding environment (and the flow of time) at each passage between the two areas of the house.
The house is specifically designed for the Mediterranean area, where this type of construction has not yet realized its potential as a valid alternative to masonry or frame structure buildings. The box of walls represents the compositional-constructive basic theme of the homes there. Unboxed is the wooden transposition of the characters of the Mediterranean home, evident by the choice of the dominant color of the house itself, the relationship with the sunlight and the dialogue with the nature.

The structure is made of Xlam panels: 9 cm thick for the wall, 12 cm for the roof and 14 cm for the floor. The house is insulated by wood fiber and hemp fiber. The facade is made of wooden boards fixed with self-drilling screws with double thread. The gutters are made of aluminium. The windows are made of wood from Imago Co. The solar tiles of the roof produce electricity and heat and protect from the water at the same time. The shading panels trimmed with CNC machines are made of plywood.
The high standardization of the modules and their total prefabrication, allow to easily study various solutions. This goal is achieved by splitting the building in accordance with the basic structural elements (floors, walls, windows, gutters, etc..), designed to be mounted completely finished, with exterior and interior finishes and free of thermal bridges. This type of approach opens to interesting industrial solutions for the production in series and, then, for the reduction of costs.

Micaela Colella (Architect, Project leader)
Maurizio Barberio (Architect, Principal Architect)

Unboxed - 100% recycable prefab wooden house? by Maurizio Barberio in Italy won the WA Award Cycle 20. Please find below the WA Award poster for this project.