– Text José Antonio Muñoz
– Video Javier Martín
– Published in Ideal on 3/1/24

News in the media:

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//www.ideal.es/navidad-en-granada/futuro-construccion-hacemos-hoy-20240102000144-nt.html

Download the video of the interview in this link:

https://life-woodforfuture.eu/documentaciones/el-futuro-de-la-construccion-lo-hacemos-hoy-eva-chacon-arquitecta-bonsai-arquitectos/

 

 

In a few weeks, the head of the Bonsai studio will finish the first of a series of ‘passivhaus’ houses that use poplars from the Vega de Granada and seek to make the most of the bioclimatic conditions to offer a sustainable alternative to the current building. In 2024 they have several projects in the pipeline.

Her name is Eva Chacón, she is an architect and head of the Bonsai studio, which is now in its 10th year of designing energy-sustainable and environmentally friendly housing. The studio’s first major milestone was the construction of a building on Cuenca Street, in the capital of Granada, where Andalusian wood was used to configure a construction that responds to the studio’s maxims: sustainable, efficient and organic architecture, inspired by nature itself. For Eva and her team, 2024 will be their year, as they will see the culmination of a project in Ogíjares, a house that will be the gateway to many other commissions, and that defines, to some extent, what could be the future of construction, a responsible alternative that uses natural and sustainable materials. In this case, we are faced with a house built with minimal use of concrete, and configured mostly by ‘Kilometer Zero’ woods.

“This project, for its small scale, symbolizes the idea of climate and environmental refuge. In 2018, the Climate and Environmental Emergency was declared, even if we forget. The way we are going, we will have water and energy shortages, and housing must not only make a leap to achieve a higher quality of life for its occupants, but also favor adaptation to this new scenario,” says Chacón. Thus, the aim is not only to create housing that is adaptable to this new reality, but also to take advantage of it, playing in its favor. “From the point of view of bioclimatism, a concept that is not new, but already practiced by our ancestors, there is much we can take advantage of, from the very orientation of the house, the exterior cladding, the use of roofs to place solar panels, landscape integration…”. The project, part of the LIFE Wood for Future initiative, incorporates laminated poplar wood beams from the fertile plains of Granada and laricio pine from the Sierra de Cazorla, designed by the UGR spinoff IberoLam Timber & Technology.

 

This is only the beginning. As Eva Chacón acknowledges, wood construction represents only a very small part of the total volume of buildings under construction. And yet the use of this material has many advantages. The future of construction is today,” she says humorously. “This house is a green shoot of hope, and we have several projects in the pipeline for 2024 with the same philosophy, so we are very hopeful,” he adds.

A ‘normal’ house

The house whose construction Eva Chacón is directing is a normal home, with the most ordinary rooms. “We have other more ‘magazine’ projects, but this one is very normal. It connects visually with the surroundings, amplifying the interior space with very harmonious exteriors. The openings of the rooms are designed so that the rooms, without having large surfaces, provide a psychological feeling of greater amplitude,” he emphasizes. “The house makes the most of solar gains, is built airtight, and works as a ‘passivhaus’, i.e., depending on the weather conditions, it offers the option of opening it or not, maintaining at all times a system of air renewal and maintenance of its quality. If we have a problem of haze or pollution peaks, the house filters the air to avoid breathing in what comes from outside”.

When the climatic conditions are right, the ‘passivhaus’ system is broken to move to ‘happy climer’ parameters, which takes advantage of the outside air. “In normal housing, you don’t have that double option. You have to ventilate every day, whether it’s hot or cold, because otherwise the air gets thinner,” says the architect. The system uses an enthalpy recuperator, i.e., the respiratory system of a living being: the temperature of the air is maintained, expelling excess heat or impurities, and the outside air takes the air at the desired temperature and discharged of CO2. “If it’s very cold outside and you’re warm inside, you don’t throw that heat out by renewing the air,” he concludes graphically.