When I grow up I want a bioclimatic house
Imagine that you have the possibility of choose how and where to live . And you decide to build yourself a house. But not just any a bioclimatic house . Did you know consume only 10% energy compared to conventional houses ? A house in which you have your solar panels , where also plug in your electric car when you have it, in which reuse rainwater for irrigation…
The bioclimatic architecture , like everything, returns to the origin, to recover a type of architecture that always existed and that used the thick mud walls to achieve thermal comfort , the facades coated with lime on the outside , to reflect the light and function as insulator from the sun (wave board to absorb it); the patios and cisterns to collect rainwater ; the adjoining pruning to stoke the fire in the home…
Today, even, there are those who they build a pond so that the rainwater is used by the animals that surround them and create a microcosm of life next to your home. This is what they did biologist couple what did they decided build a bioclimatic house in Tarifa , with the help of an ecological architect, Pablo Farfan , who after decades with his studio installed in Madrid, decided to return to the South, to his native Malaga, and begin to investigate the traditional architecture of the Axarquia of Malaga , from which he is drawing, as he tells us, revolutionary conclusions. Investigate the past to bring it to the present.
El Cuarton, the bioclimatic house of Tarifa
Every time he builds more houses (and not only for foreigners) that recover the tradition. is the call neovernacular architecture . This house in Tarifa, for example, has become a resting place for birds flying to Africa , and who stop to drink before crossing the Strait. The house also has a viewpoint to watch the cetaceans cross the Alboran Sea. A luxury today, which according to what he tells us, is no longer such a luxury. “ We are building ecological architecture at conventional architecture prices”.
BACK TO THE ORIGIN, ALSO IN ARCHITECTURE
“This bioclimatic architecture is nothing new. Until the 1980s, architects designed bioclimatic houses or houses with bioclimatic principles as the norm . But it was from that decade on that construction began to get worse”, according to Farfán tells Traveler.es.
“It began to be taken for granted that everyone would have air conditioning and heating at home ”. So they stopped having prominence bioclimatic design and construction elements and criteria ” How to make the most of the renewable energy from the environment , reuse rainwater, avoid overheating the home with materials such as lime or mud; design and orient the rooms and houses to seek thermal comfort at all times of the year, cover the walls and floors with sustainable materials such as cork, locate green roofs...
Until the 1980s, architects designed bioclimatic houses or houses with bioclimatic principles as the norm
In other words, in the eighties there was a 180º turn towards unsustainable consumption with a single purpose: fatten pockets that were not ours . This was modernity. "In the past, houses were built with materials that, surprisingly, are still used in places like Andalusia," says Farfán. It is the case of the Moron de la Frontera lime , whose elaboration process is today a UNESCO Intangible Heritage. The lime of the Gordillos -as it is known- it is baked in an artisanal oven with olive wood from the prunings, 100% eco. “The smoke of the olive tree itself creates nanoparticles that are integrated into the lime and give it enormous flexibility. It has nothing to do with lime cooked with diesel. The process is different. They are all advantages” says the architect.
Another perfect natural product to build bioclimatic houses is the cork , "A natural insulator of which in Spain we have enormous quantities and, however, we do not use it!", He points out. Our country, with 506,000 ha of cork oak forests, 25% of the world total, it is the world's second largest producer of cork, only behind Portugal . In other words, “we have the best materials in the world, the greatest heritage in Europe in construction with earth. The country with the largest amount and the best ecological lime in the entire continent . We are the largest cork producers on the planet and do you know what is being used from all this? Practically nothing. We are clouded with what they tell us from Germany. We Spaniards have a very low self-esteem due to our traditions and our knowledge ”, declares the architect.
ARTISANS WHO FOLLOW THE FOOT OF THE CANYON
In addition to the organic lime from Morón de la Frontera, in Velez-Malaga there is also a peculiar craft brick factory . In fact, the process that follows the mud here, in this town is also Intangible Heritage of Andalusia.
The bioclimatic design takes advantage of the resources of the environment
“They cook the tiles with avocado firewood . The factory is on top of the quarry, next to a river. They scoop out the clay, make the tiles by hand, and let them dry in the open air. Then they mount them on a Nasrid oven, just like those of medieval times , and they cook them with avocado wood from the Axarquia prunings”, he explains. Also together with them, the ecological architect is working to build new designs that can already be seen in some five-star hotels such as the Marbella Club, he informs us.
“It's not that we're crazy that we want to build old cabins. No way. These houses have maximum comfort and the best finishes . It is that the large volume of the house, that is, the walls, the insulation, the floors, the paintings, the tiles, the finishes… are increasingly from here and handcrafted ”, he comments. It is not so difficult.
Today, moreover, the great paradigm shift is that eco architecture is no longer so expensive . “We are making houses at the price of normal ones. We use nearby materials, which we are investigating, to adapt them to the present, and being from proximity they are not hyper expensive ” (because, to begin with, you save on transportation and the footprint generated by this transportation). "Another thing is that you want the best kitchen furniture, the best finishes... That is what raises the price, but the cost of the house, the bioclimatic structure itself, we are building it at average prices."
These houses have maximum comfort and the best finishes
MODELS OF BIOCLIMATIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE PAST
The knowledge of our ancestors is rarely valued. One of the best-known examples of bioclimatic architecture in Andalusia is the Cordovan patio. It comes from the Impluvium of the Roman Domus, although it was already used by the Greeks . "The house It had several patios that were called Impluvium because they functioned as an outside room to collect the rains.”
There are still houses in Vejer de la Frontera, in Tarifa and throughout the province of Córdoba that continue to function like this. “All the water that falls on the roof is led to the center of the patio and ends up in a well. It is with this water that it is irrigated, cleaned or fenced”, comments the architect. And it is these types of elements that “we are doing now, designs that collect rainwater and store water in a cistern to clean, water the garden , etc.".
Another example is the cave houses . those of Granada, those of Almería, those of Cádiz … although the best known are those of Guadix . “In these cave houses there is always a constant temperature between 14 or 15º . It is the temperature that the earth has at this latitude, geothermal energy, the heat from the center of the earth that puts the earth's crust at that temperature. A temperature independent of the sun.
Those homes in Guadix are in summer and in winter at 14º . From there it can be heated in winter or cooled in summer with a bit of ingenuity: generating air currents in holes, windows, chimneys... "Today in the bioclimatic architecture the cave effect is generated putting a vegetal cover on the houses. It consists of covering the roof of the house with a considerable soil substrate and putting a vegetation that produces that effect”, for example.
Cave-house in Chinchilla, Albacete
Another classic that is still used is the use of lime in all the towns of Andalusia : “The white color of the lime reflects the excess of sun. In contrast to this, the mountain towns, in which the aim is to take advantage of sunlight, use black slate roofs and black walls”, explains the architect.
Traditional architecture was bioclimatic because we did not have current energy sources: petrochemical . “All architecture designed prior to the Industrial Revolution, when the use of coal and oil did not exist, they looked for what was in the environment . We have a lot to learn from this architecture, since in many cases it encompasses thousands of years of pre-industrial technological development prior to fossil fuels. It is an eminently renewable and ecological architecture”.
ARCHITECTURE THAT IS DEFINED AS ECOLOGICAL AND IS NOT
And although there is more and more awareness, explains Farfán, ” there is a lot of architecture that is defined as ecological and it is not . Since, although more and more houses are built to consume less energy, in turn are filled with petrochemical insulators, which require a lot of energy, generate garbage, waste and pollution … both in its construction processes and in its dismantling and recycling processes. In these cases the house is not ecological. It will be efficient, but not ecological”.
Cork oak in the biodynamic house of Tarifa
Ecological architecture takes into account the processes of the useful life of the house . wondering about where do these materials come from, do they generate waste, what energy is used to transport them and if once their useful life is over, if they can be reincorporated into nature without damaging it or if they are waste that pollutes.
The paints that are used today, for example, they are plastic paints that we end up breathing and that end up degrading . “The widely spread chlorine-rubber paints, when the sun degrades them, the rain washes them away and they end up in the sea. Or the asphalt fabrics that are being used on the roofs, or the insulating materials such as polyurethane foams... or all this type of lacquer that you have to replace because they degrade and end up in nature. “If you use natural materials that does not happen”.
El Cuarton, the bioclimatic house of Tarifa