| Architectural Concept |
| Engineering and Construction |
| Project participants |
Rhome (A Home for Rome) is a part of a program of the city planning to regenerate the neighborhood of the Tor Fiscale, replacing in particular illegal settlements with efficient and ecological prefab housing. On these recovered spaces a small communities with neat aesthetics must set up. The ground floor consists of a reinforced concrete seating on which rest the four floors in wood frame, for a total of 12 apartments. These are distributed around a central column housing the technical services for kitchens, bathrooms, ventilation, etc. The peculiarity of Rhome is to integrate solar panels on the roof and in facade. Photovoltaic modules are also integrated into removable details of the main windows. The design team presented in Versailles a prefab house (one apartment of 60 sqm) which representes a part of the last level of the building.
Photovoltaic modules covers a continuous strip from the slope of the roof to the foot of the facade, on the south facade of the prototype. The chosen technology is Solbian's flexible monocrystalline modules because of their light weight and good resistance to hostile conditions (salt water, shocks, etc.). The photovoltaic facade panel can be raised by 15° to be placed in the extension of the roof modules, in order to increase the productivity of the system.
The new urban standard
The world is called to solve the challenge of the balance between development and resource consumption, and this change is entrusted to the city, which must be able to change the way they manage population growth, energy use and administration of the territory. Lately, news reports have highlighted the critical issues related to the city that governs itself through methodologies related to a society that is no longer there. New technologies, the different way of living social relations, new utilities, require a new way of enjoying the city and its spaces.
Historically, social changes were associated with a crisis of the cities, which had to change their way of being planned and lived, in order to solve the problems. Currently many such solutions have been proposed and implemented among difficulties and successes, but they need to be empowered in order to ensure that the planning and direction of the future towns are based on these values. The RhOME project accepts the challenge and takes the opportunity to define and propose new planning standards, adapted to the needs of a modern, multi-ethnic and different society.
For example, the current legislation ensures that 18 square meters per person will be dedicated to urban standards; 2.5 square meters of these are for parking. To encourage mobility slow this standard is too high and also exacerbates the problems of overbuilding. The process then starts from reviewing the current data to which add new features, like the ability for everyone to have an internet connection, to have clean energy and to re-use what it produces and consumes. Currently we are focusing on quantifying those standards.
RE-USE – Why “One thing leads to another”
The smart city is facing an environmental and economic sustainable reform of production processes and resource management, in an environmental and economic direction. This revolution feeds on concepts such as integration, interdependence and the “closed loop“. There is no waste, but resources. Eco- products that can be processed, consumed, abandoned and refed into the production cycle in other forms, in the logic that “ one thing leads to another.”
At the base of the crisis of consumptions, there is a “linear” model production, high waste of energy and natural resources. The products resulting from these resources, at the end of their life cycle become waste. The high cost required for their disposal, resource scarcity and price volatility have undermined this system. One response to this difficulty comes from the realization of an “circular” economy, based on reuse and regeneration values.
In order to become innovation, it must be the result of a new conception of the production process of goods, as well as their design. The basic conception of this innovation process is the will to reduce the production of waste by re-inserting the components of a product in production cycles, thereby limiting the dependence on natural resources. The beneficiaries of the assets are no longer seen as consumers, but as users. This means that unless a product has to be changed for its reuse, faster will be its reinstatement in the process. Also it can be reused several times, and its potential savings will be higher. Product innovation starts then by the choice of materials, which must be environmentally friendly and reusable.
