In the KA13 project in Oslo, the usual design process was reversed. Instead of designing the project first and then selecting the materials to be used, the team first identified unused materials from nearby buildings and proposed refurbishing the existing building they were working on using them.
A really interesting refurbishment proposal for a 1959 office building by a well-known Catalan architect, Francesc Mitjans.
The challenge was renovating the façade, improving its water-tightness and thermal performance, while remaining respectful to a significant building from recent Catalan architectural history.
This rain screen façade clearly demonstrates evolution along the path to prefabrication. Both the interior and exterior layers are built with highly prefabricated dry systems and it is not so common to find such a massive solution. This enables the façade to loose neither its thermal inertia nor reduce the acoustic barrier.
The inner layer, which uses heavy concrete panels, is a very good option.
In the same way that we wonder whether the chicken or the egg came first, we could ask ourselves who takes the first steps in innovation: the architect proposing new solutions, or the industry developing them?. In most cases, developments in industry respond to new approaches suggested by architects.
This façade's goal is not to create a traditional static architectural image for the city, but to design a technological solution that responds to the inhabitant's complexity through their life course there.Therefore, we have developed prefabricated façade-ceiling-roof components, gathered in a catalogue.
Some cladding panels offer many possibilities. In these single-family houses in Palma, the panels used for the outer layer of a rainscreen façade are perforated in the terrace space to define an umbraculum. There is no change of material and the composition of prisms remains nearly unaltered; it is simply a matter of lattices.
There is no easy project, but it is particularly challenging to refurbish a residential building of this size in which, over the years, each occupant has modified their terrace individually. Here the architects solved the challenge with a few well-placed interventions.