4.30^E

Archimedes' housing /Mollier's housing
Climate as design of the house

Philippe Rahm architects


Holidays'housing, Vassivière, Limousin, France, 2005
Client: SYMIVA (Syndicat mixte interdépartemental et régional de Vassivière)
Architect: Philippe Rahm, architectes (Philippe Rahm, Jérôme Jacqmin, collaborators: Cyrille Berger, Alexandra Cammas, Irene D'Agostino)



Archimedes' housing and Mollier's housing are housing projects which inverse the process between the shape of the architecture and the void in order to create climatic spaces for living adapted to the sustainable development.

The scripts are, in these two projects, the invisible parameters of the space.

-Mollier's housing: Relative humidity
-Archimedes' housing: Air temperature


Each of these two parameters generate the specific form of the house:

-The gradation of the humidity level from the dry to the wet will organize the plan of the Mollier's housing.

-The gradation of the density of the air from the cold at the lowest level to the warm at the highest floor, become the organization of the section in the Archimedes' housing.

In these two projects, the use of the invisible parameters as spatial script renews the typology of the house in an unexpected way. This strategy is against the usual and functional typology of the housing (like private/public, night/day division). Variation of climate create new typologies, from the cold to the warm, from the wet to the dry and the inhabitant become a migratory inhabitant, moving into the sensuality of the house in relationship with the humidity or the temperature.

In the Mollier's housing, the plans is like a following rooms from to

Room 1 from 0% to 30% RH (Relative Humidity): drier, sauna
Room 2 from 30% to 60% RH : bedroom, office
Room 3 from 60% to 90% RH : bathroom, living room, kitchen
Room 4 from 90% to 100% RH : living room, swimming pool

and for the Archimedes' Housing, according to the Archimedes' rule and the gradation of the nudity, the section will be  a gradation from the ground floor to the highest level:

ground floor: 16°C: toilet
first floor: 18°C: bed room
second floor: 20°C living room
third floor: 22°C bathroom