The worldwide production of energy, which is prevalent based on non-renewable sources, is basically polluting the whole planet, however, it seems the amount of money generated by these sources is enough to forget the problem. Luckily, climate change is helping to let people understand the risks of this kind of production and a great number of people are trying to use renewable sources to produce their own energy. However, thorough this course it was learned that it not always possible to have all the buildings working by themselves, especially if the aim is to do architecture.

ENERGY CONSUMPTION

Whit basic calculations and energy regulations, it was calculated the energy consumption of the studied building, which, however, it doesn’t count the complete manufacturing process because of the lack in time and in the knowledge of the machine (the building is a CLT factory).

NB: According to the faculty it was made some correction to the regulations due to the settings of the studied building.

THE BUILDING ENERGY PRODUCTION

To exaggerate there were added PV cells and panels in every possible place, expecting to produce a large amount of energy and in a second phase decide which it was the best option with the following design choices. It was used software related to SketchUp which help to calculate the possible production. However, the master administration did not select a site where this building will be located and it was just decided that it will be “somewhere in Catalunya”, therefore, a proper sun analysis was not possible. It was decided to add some wind turbines to generate even more energy, due to personal interests.

THE RESULTS

All those efforts to understand that it was just possible to generate 76% of the total energy consumption of the studied building. Moreover, if we consider the manufacturing process completely, it will be even less.

Learning by doing is the slogan of IAAC, therefore, after the whole solar energy workshop it was interesting to learn it is not always possible to be a Robison Crusoe (Faculty metaphor to explain buildings who work by themselves) and it will be important to work together to generate a “connected energy system”, limited by a reasonable number of buildings, based on renewable energy, and everyone should limit their own impact and try to produce a reasonable part of this energy.

Barcelona CLT factory is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, developed at Master in Advanced Ecological Building and Biocity 2019/20 by:
Filippo Vegezzi & Rafael Abboud

Faculty: Oscar Aceves