#okohaus

[fernand0adnan]

Öko Haus kitchen produced by ERTL UND ZULL, Berlin, 2021. @samchermayeffoffice photo © @oliverhelbig_

[y3s1-20192020]

Material analyze

The okohaus built by frei otto is result of that effort for human. It was sustainable architecture project in berlin. that was located in the site that was formal Vatican embassy.

It was surrounded by forests. Each residents build their own house, with the effort to respect nature by making a grass roof on the top, use solar panels, reuse water. It was successful quite project. So the residents live almost 20 years.  But the problem is what happened when this house demolished.

It is a sustainable architecture but it doesn’t remain forever and someday, it has to be demolished.

what they did for ‘respect nature’ just cause more environmental burden not a respect nature .

The US EPA in 2016 says construction demolition produces about 534 million tones of debris per year.  

As you can see in this graph, most of the material takes over hundreds of years to biodegrade. Concrete which comprise seventy percent of the construction debris is non biodegradable.

I analyze every single materials in this house for each units and the color means possibility of demolishing. Then, I divided all units into 4 types with the starting side of breaking.

 Below material shows de-comolishing strategy of each type and material analyzation.     

[y3s1-20192020]

Concrete recycling experiment - concrete cannibalism

Strategies for recycling concrete exist already, but the energy and lavor involved in this recycling is suspect, and the quality of the aggregate is low. Papers on the recycling of concrete make no references to the idea that one could take a block of concrete from the construction site and use it as a load bearing brick.

The reality is that today the majority if concrete is landfilled because a solution to build random sized concrete into the main material stream has yet to be provided. 

The weird pattern you see mimics the growth of trumpet flowers that is exist in the okohaus garden, a kind of vine. It increase outside exposure of the surface. From different scale, it could Offer environment for bacteria and lichen, become a supporter for vine.

Below video show the process of concrete breaking. I carved with CNC and break it 10 concrete blocks.

Then I scan every broken pieces. And analyze dimension, volume, angles of every single pieces. I found out for one breaking process, the volume reduce into  25.2pecent of previous one on average. It means [30x30x30cm]  cm cube become [18x18x18cm] cube from first breaking and [4.7x4.7x4.7cm] cube in forth breaking.  I conclude 4 breaking process is enough for physical decomposing.

I find out stones that are roughly the same proportion and angle to each other,  and build the wall in rhino virtually and make several prototypes. In reality, the gap between rhino is filled with small concrete pieces. This suggest a kind of algorithms workflow connected to digital for random sized concrete debris.

First prototype of recycling concrete wall.  

Experiment of the pattern and breaking

[y3s1-20192020]

We, the human build okohaus, we are responsible for demolishing process. 

I focused on concrete because it is the most common building material but hard to decompose, reuse.  Worldwide, over ten billion tons of concrete are being produced each year. Such volumes require vast amounts of natural resources for aggregate and cement production. 

This experiment shows  cannibalistic methodology by analyzing the shape of broken debris and build with using the angle of each debris. By carving the pattern that was shown at phase 2 and breaking the debris into small pieces, it shows predictable shape triangle and polygones. Debris is gathered, scanned, and processed through an algorithmic workflow. 

The human occupying space shrink gradually by breaking the wall and move the wall in to the house and non human start to expand their space.  

[y3s1-20192020]

My main Idea is 'Live together, Die together'

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The next residence here suppose to demolish all and create their own nest again. In reality, it is impossible to demolish at all because it takes time, money, labors. Even more,  'Demolish' dosen't mean 'extinct forever in the earth'. It just means discarding construction debris to landfill. I searched 'decompose span' of each material to reduce demolishing waste. I realized that concrete actually doesn't decompose at all which means it remains forever.

In Dark ecology, Timothy mortan said,

"You, the human, made *the things, or you the human can understand what it is - therefore you are responsible." ( * the things - I change the word  'plautonium' in to 'the things' so that we could think this thing as concrete. )

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I agree with him, we are responsible as a member of this species for the anthropocene. So I focused on 'How to decompose concrete' with human intervention but also non human intervention. I analyzed non human intervention that can decompose concrete. Plants, lichen and bacteria chemically decompose concrete. Human accelerate this process by make pattern, breaking the wall, and breed this creatures in the wall. Small action of breeding affect non human things to grow. 

The pattern comes from the direction of plant growing - Trumpet flower, it could be carved by hands, or curved chaser. It makes space for lichen to grow or plant to crawl the wall. After carved out the pattern, people live for 20 years. Then it is time for breaking the wall. The concrete wall becomes concrete debris filled in wire net. This wire box could use structure or wall  but also become a house for lichen and bacteria. The broken debris give environment for non human things.

So the human occupying space becomes smaller as time goes by.

[y3s1-20192020]

Phase 1 - Okohaus

Oko means ‘eco’ in German. 

Eco, which comes from Greek word ‘Oiko’ meaning house or environment the family, the family’s property and the house. Aristole used it in his politics refer to everybody living in a given house. 

This Okohaus not only mean ‘ eco friendly house’ but also the place that generate community - living and changing.

Okohaus was sustainable architecture project in 1989, with title ‘co-participants, co-builder’ that each habitants build their own nest. The head architect, Frei Otto just build infrastructure and without it, everything was decided by participants.There were two rules, respect for nature, maximum use of nature characteristic especially south facade for sunlight. Each habitant found their own way to respect nature. Haus 11, for example, they develop special bead wall for insulation. They put polysterene granule between the glass and use vacuuming pipe to adjust the amount of granule. Haus 13 store the seed what was existed before house was built, and replant them in their garden. 

However, 30 years have passed. It is time for new residence. In fact, as each home is the product of its use and self planner, how are newcomers supposed to adapt to an already highly personalised “nest”? Initially new families were supposed to be able to “demolish the old nest”, but this has never been the case. The project became “another” house on the market.

To make Okohaus to be a Oko house, respect for architects what was already built, respect for what residence had done in this site, I analyzed every material in the house that could be demolished. I made plan catalog ‘to keep it or demolish’ for next residence. The graph shows entire material in okohous and each material’s life span. Start from red in the graph, deep red includes structure that can not demolished.  Red means not a structure but hard to demolish. When it goes to green, it means that it could be demolished easily. The graph is a guide for the plan catalog so the new comer could decide which to demolish.

[cartografico]

Frei Otto y Herman Kendell | Okohaus - Viviendas participativas ecológicas | Berlín; Alemania | 1988

Ökohaus in Berlin by Deborah.L on Flickr.