re-NEW-cleus
| re-thinking bush fire protection
[SAND studio]
The re-NEW-cleus project is an entry to a competition held by the Victorian Government after Black Saturday as a way of generating ideas and discourse around the re-building of the town of Kinglake.
Brief
Brief
- Design a single dwelling house and garden space for the residents in Kinglake, Victoria, who have lost their homes in the bushfires
- The main objective is to offer a way for residents to “take the next step” after the initial installation of the re-Growth pod
- The re-Growth Pod is a permanent and cost effective housing unit. The robust pre-fabricated concrete structure has been designed to be built upon, but in the short term acts as a habitable starting point for the building of a new home
- Consideration should be given to the staging of construction and how the family can inhabit the site as works progress. Water tanks and water harvesting are integral to the design
- The top 3 assessment criteria are:
- Quality of the overall design and how successfully bushfire mitigation proposals have been integrated within it.
- Effectiveness of Bush fire mitigation proposals in meeting the design objectives.
- Innovation and creativity.
- Through an analogy to cell reproduction the re-NEW-cleus project investigates the concept of duplicating resources that are already available to achieve a simple yet flexible solution for an entire community.
- The re-Growth pod is duplicated any number of times to satisfy the room requirements of the client, installed separately on site and then bound together by a central funnel shaped ‘spindle’.
- The design is highly adapted to bush fire hazard mitigation on the premises of 1) reducing the bulk of the building and 2) drenching:
- The reduction of the bulk of the building is achieved with an unconventional concept that allows the embers to “pass through” the drenched interior of the building.
- Drenching is achieved by sprinklers, which is usually an expensive retro-fitted, peripheral and pump-dependant application, but this proposal integrates a simple gravity fed sprinkler solution which is fundamental to the re-NEW-cleus concept.
- The design revolves conceptually, visually and physically around the funnel shaped roof conceived to facilitate bush fire mitigation as well as space planning principles.