Hasta La Ideas

Brazilian firm Laurent Troost Architects has built a concrete house in the Amazon, featuring outdoor living areas and a swimming pool that are elevated above the dense tropical forest surrounds.

The property called Casa Campinarana is located in Manaus, a town in northwestern Brazil along the Negro and Amazon rivers. Laurent Troost designed the two-storey house to nestle within a campinarana, a forest characterised by small trees, whose soil is shallow and clay-like.

The house features a kitchen and living room on the top floor, as well as an elevated swimming pool. These spaces were built on the first floor rather than at grade to reduce the amount of buildable space on its ground floor.

“To minimise deforestation and preserve as much as possible of the forest, the main architectural strategy for construction in the 20 by 40 metre plot was the reversal of the classic housing typology,” said Laurent Troost Architects.

The other aim for the project was to employ passive design strategies to suit the warm climate of the Amazonian setting. This included the creation of overhanging eaves to offer shading, openings for cross-ventilation, as well as the preservation of local ecological systems.

“The Amazon, more than any other area on the planet, requires climate-appropriate architectural strategies,” the firm added.

“The natural and environmental conditions are extreme and the proximity of the equatorial zone requires an architecture oriented towards thermal comfort and ‘passive’ sustainability.”

Casa Campinarama is formed from two narrow volumes stacked on top of each other to form a T-shape. Sliding glass walls around the top floor volume to allow the main living spaces to open up to the outdoors and offer cross ventilation.

A weathering steel roof covers the structure. It is divided into two, allowing for a breeze to pass through the home.

“The main volume received a contemporary reinterpretation of the colonial roofs, with eight pitches in two independent levels, allowing the fruition of the winds and the creation of an air mattress in the in-between space, protecting the thermal comfort of the living space of the upper floor of the house,” said the studio.

Made from Corten steel, the roof extends over the edges of the building, folding down at two of its ends to cover a portion of the top-level, and protect the interiors from the first and last rays of strong sun.

“The choice of Corten as roof material was due to its low maintenance and evolutionary character in harmony with the forest of Campina and its reddish clay soil so present in the landscapes of the Amazon,” said the studio.

The roof also protrudes out from the walls and is supported on eight V-shaped posts. Some of its red-tinged moments are left exposed underneath.

The areas of the house that can handle strong sunlight are left more exposed while living spaces and bedrooms are more shaded by the roof. Exposed spaces include the entry, garage, storage, pool and laundry.

The upper floor is occupied by the open-plan living room, dining room and kitchen, with glazed doors opening onto the space outside. The roof shades much of these areas.

Black fence railings run along the walkways on the top level of the property, which also features a patio with a hammock and an outdoor kitchen and dining area.

An outdoor swimming pool completes the upper level, and is covered in turquoise tiles that pick up on the hues of the dense surrounding greenery.

Below the pool is a carport, with ivy climbing up its concrete sides to conceal the structure within the landscape.

Positioned next to the pool is an enclosed but outdoor stairwell that leads down to the ground floor. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms and an office with a wall of shelves and another glazed side complete the lower level.

Exposed concrete features prominently inside, including its floors and walls, while white also plays a prevalent part in the design. A stark white office contrasts strongly with the neighbouring foliage. Bathrooms are also completely white.

Glass fins are placed across much of the home’s glazing allow for shading, while other rooms feature white curtains for a minimal aesthetic.

Casa Campinarama has been longlisted for Dezeen Awards 2019 as a rural residential project, joining other houses like a black Canadian boathouse by Akb Architects and a remote glass and weathered steel home by Slade Architecture.

The house also joins a host of other residences in Brazil, including a holiday home that uses reclaimed bricks, a black prefabricated cabin with a green roof and a slender off-grid farmhouse.

Photography is by Maíra Acayaba and Leonardo Finotti.

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Embracing the circular economy and closed-loop design is the only way for brands to achieve business success while safeguarding the planet, according to a senior member of the innovation team at Adidas.

The circular economy “is the solution,” said Dharan Kirupanantham, who is an eco-innovation programme leader at the sportswear brand. “We don’t see it any other way.”

“This is not just good for the planet; this is good for business,” Kirupanantham told Dezeen.

Kirupanantham spoke to Dezeen after presenting Adidas’ new Futurecraft Loop sneaker at a conference about the circular economy held in London last month.

The fully recyclable sneaker is Adidas’ first foray into the concept of closed-loop design, whereby materials used in products are infinitely reusable.

Closed loop “pure form of the circular economy”

Developing closed-loop products is seen as a key step towards turning the global economy into a circular one, in which waste and pollution are eliminated while natural systems are restored.

The prototype shoe is made of a single recyclable material, thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), meaning that at the end of its life the plastic can be ground up into pellets and reused.

The closed-loop approach could in theory mean that brands no longer sell products to customers, but instead lend them materials that are returned later for recycling.

“We look at closed loop as the most pure form of the circular economy,” said Kirupanantham. “So you make something, someone uses it and brings it back somehow. And that is turned into a new product: a new shoe or whatever.”

Adidas is testing the Futurecraft Loop shoe with 200 selected users.

Kirupanantham added: “We’re trying a lot of things with take-back and the social aspect of that. How will people bring back their products? What will engage them? What will inspire them?”

Kirupanantham showcased the shoe at the annual summit organised by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity started by former round-the-world sailor Ellen MacArthur that champions the circular economy.

He spoke on a panel that discussed how designers could get involved in the circular economy.

The foundation has so far mostly worked with large brands and corporations, but it recently announced that it wanted designers to help it transform the existing linear economy – in which resources are expended during the manufacturing process and materials are discarded at the end of the product cycle – into a circular one, where everything is recovered and fed back into the system.

Circular economy “just makes sense”

In an exclusive interview with Dezeen, MacArthur said designers are “absolutely vital” to the circular economy.

“I would encourage designers to think about how the creative process can build something much broader than their product, and how their product can fit in that much broader restorative system,” MacArthur said.

Kirupanantham, a British engineering graduate and philosophy doctor based at Adidas’s headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, said he supported the foundation’s mission.

“It just makes sense,” he said. “It’s common sense to the industry, and us. That’s how we envisage the future.”

“What we’re trying to do, in our team specifically, is change how we make products such as shoes and shirts, and what we make it them from, because the ones we have right now, just won’t allow us to reach that efficient future of the circular economy. That’s what we’re trying to change.”

Kirupanantham agreed that concepts like closed-loop design and circular design could seem confusing to both designers and consumers, adding that more real-world examples are needed to help people understand the concepts.

“Even in our own company, I think for a long time, [the circular economy] was this conceptual thing,” he said.

“We were drawing circles for years and years, but when we had a product and we showed that to our leadership, that was the tipping point in our own company. [We were able to] give them something and say: this is not just good for the planet, this is good for business.”

Adidas has three stage approach to circular design

Kirupanantham said that his team at Adidas had a three-stage approach to embracing circular design.

The first chapter involves an “imperfect circle”, he said, citing Adidas’ ongoing collaboration with ocean-plastic recycling initiative Parley for the Oceans.

“So the first chapter was an open loop, an imperfect circle, where we took ocean plastic and we turned it into a shoe, but there was still this open-ended part of what happens after that,” he said.

“Then when we talk about product-to-product, which is a closed loop,” he said, referring to initiatives such as the Futurecraft Loop concept.

“And then beyond that, we start thinking about how our [products] interact with the nature around us,” he added, explaining the third stage. “So degradability is one thing that we haven’t fully understood yet, or the inclusion of bio-based materials and alternatives.”

Kirupanantham said that besides making business sense, the move towards circular design is partly being driven by its younger customers.

“We have to go where our consumers want to go,” he said. “Our consumers are more aware, much more streetwise. Regardless of what happens in legislation, it’s an economy that we believe they are striving towards. And that means we will strive towards it.”

The post Adopting circular design is “good for business” says Adidas eco-innovation leader appeared first on Dezeen.

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