Refl ection report Comfortable aging in the Airey strip Iris van den Brink, 4115139 // July, 2016 2 Colofon //Juli 2016 Student Iris van den Brink 4115139 Architecture Mauro Parravicini Building technology Engbert van der Zaag Research Eric van den Ham Delft University of Technology Msc Graduation studio Architecutral Engineering 3 1. The relationship between research and design in the graduation project The goal of the Architectural Engineering graduation a research paper. The research gave me a lot of studio is to bring spatial, functional, social and knowledge with respect to design for elderly; what technical developments together in an integrated their demands and wishes are; how a greenhouse design project. The intention of the studio is to start can contribute to this; and how a greenhouse for with a technical fascination, which lead together elderly should look like. The combination of the with the chosen location and users to the research outcome of my research and the site analysis of question. the Airey strip have led to the starting point of my design: adding greenhouse boxes to the Airey strip My starting point was my technical fascination for as common space for the elderly and to improve sustainable and healthy architecture, architecture the comfort and architectural quality of the that contribute to the comfort and wellbeing of neighborhood. the users. The combination of this fascination with the Airey strip(in Amsterdam New West) as location Due to my focus on the technical research, in this and elderly as users resulted in the objective of my first half year, my statement on the cultural value graduation project. Transforming the Airey strip was neglected. This forced me to take a step back into healthy and energy neutral elderly housing. and perform more research on the background of A potential solution I wanted to investigate was the residential area, the original architect and the the addition of a greenhouse. The addition of a building system, after my P2. In hindsight, I should greenhouse to the existing buildings could be a have investigated the cultural value earlier in the possible solution to meet the needs of the elderly, design process. while improving the current state of the Airey strip. Together these aspects have led to my research Another part of my research was to make the Airey question: How to transform the Airey strip into elderly buildings energy neutral. In order to achieve this, housing with optimal thermal and visual comfort for sustainability have played a role in my project from this group, with the use of a greenhouse? the beginning of the design process played. This will be further discussed in Chapter 5 The first half year of the graduation studio I focused on giving an answer to this research question. The outcome of this research has been combined in 4 2. The relationship between the theme of the graduation lab and the subject/case study chosen by the student within this framework The Architectural Engineering studio is composed fascination as starting point helps to come up of three themes; Stock, Make and Flow. Within with new and innovative ways of renovations. But these themes multiple locations can be chosen. in hindsight I could have learned more from the For this research Amsterdam was chosen with collaboration and looked at the cultural values in ‘stock’ as theme. This theme and location are part an earlier stage. of a collaboration project between Architectural Engineering and Heritage and architecture, which After the P2 we investigated in a small group of is called ‘Beyond the Current’. The project ‘Beyond H&A and AE students the existing building to the the Current’ should open up new design possibilities last detail. This taught me a lot about the building, for renovating homes that are not classifiable as a but also how to look at existing details in general. terraced house. We based our drawings on the existing drawings of Hooyschuur, the architectural firm that is renovating The interesting thing about this collaboration for me the buildings currently. However, these drawings was to see the different approaches of the Heritage were substantially incorrect. As a result we have lost & Architecture and Architectural engineering. a lot of time changing these drawings. In hindsight Where Architecture Engineering starts from a we should have based our drawings on the original technical fascination, Heritage & architecture takes old drawings. This would have taken more time in the existing building as starting point. the beginning, but eventually would have saved us a lot of work. As I mentioned before my statement on the cultural value was neglected, due to my focus on the technical research. I think that taking the technical 5 3. The relationship between the methodical line of approach of the graduation lab and the method chosen by the student in this framework As I mentioned before the method of Architectural research. The combination of literature studies and Engineering is to start designing from a technical calculations provided me enough knowledge to fasciation, which will be mainly researched during answer my research question. I would have liked to the fi rst half year of the graduation. Not only should investigated more on the ventilation and air quality the technical research provide specifi c requirements of the building and make daylight simulations of for the design, for example by designing a technical the building, but due to time constraints I only did ‘toolkit’ suitable for architectural application, it shallow research on these aspects. can also serve as a source of inspiration for the architectonic element of the graduation track. During the research period of the graduation, I also looked at several case studies, to learn more I started my design with the technical fascination for about how to build a greenhouse in the urban sustainable and Healthy architecture. In combination environment. These case studies I only used as with the chosen location and the user this led to inspiration during the design process. In hindsight my research question. To give an answer to this I could have looked deeper into these cases. For question I used literature studies and calculations. example, how the greenhouse were designed In line with the methodical line of approach of in detail or how the climate was regulated. In this the Architectural Engineering studio, the outcome way the case studies could have been more than of my research paper resulted in a ‘toolkit’ for my just an inspirational project. They could have given design. As I mentioned this formed together with the me more knowledge about important aspects of outcome of the site analysis the basis of my design. designing a greenhouse. I am satisfi ed with the methods I have used for my Demands and wishes eldery Guidlines Added value greenhouse Design Location analysis Dimensions greenhouse Figure 1, Proces diagram 6 4. The relationship between the project and the wider social context My project is based on two problems that we are facing in the Netherlands, the lack of suitable housing for elderly and the outdated early after war building stock. In the Netherlands we are dealing with an aging population. Because of the increasing life expectancy, as a result of the increasing wealth and improved health care, the percentage of people over 65 years will continue to increase in the coming years. This will be increased by the baby boom generation, who will reach the age of 65 years starting from 2010. Due to a shift in government policies, elderly and other vulnerable people are encouraged to keep living in their own home and will receive nursing and care at home. This is called ‘aging in place’. (Doekhie, de Veer, Rademakers, Schellevis, & Francke, 2014). As a result of this aging population and the shift in government policies, there will be a shortage of Figure 2, Aging population suitable housing for the elderly. ) According to the national government 44 000 homes suitable for seniors should be added to the market every year until 2021(Rijksoverheid, n.d.). The early postwar building stock no longer meets today’s requirements. They are often too small and consume too much energy. The housing blocks in the Airey strip in the western garden cities of Amsterdam are one of many examples of the outdated building stock. Despite the fact that these buildings were revolutionary in the fifties, they are outdated now. In the climate policy of Amsterdam they pursue a CO2 emission reduction of 70-80%, in the year 2040 (Leguijt, Groot, & Bles, 2010). In order to realize this, the existing building stock, like the Airey building must become substantially more energy efficient. With my project ‘Comfortable aging in the Airey Figure 3, Outdated building stock, Energy labels strip’ I wanted to give an example on how to deal with these two problems. In my design, suitable elderly housing is created, while improving the existing building stock. 7 5. Reflection on sustainability in the project There is a growing consensus about the scale A sustainable project started already by choosing and importance of climate change and the to upgrade the Airey strip. These early post- war need to ensure secure energy supplies with apartment buildings have an energy label of anticipation on the rising global demand. The built D-E , so a lot can be gained in the field of energy environment accounts for about 40% of the total consumption. In order to achieve energy neutrality, energy consumption in the EU (Rijksdients voor I made several choices for my design. These choices Ondernemend Nederland, 2014). Therefore a strong are summarized in figure 4 reduction of the energy consumption of the built environment and the use of renewable sources, By analyzing the wishes and demands of elderly will reduce the energy dependence and the CO2 and the current state of the Airey strip I came up emissions significantly.