Silver Architecture · 2023
Casa Una Community Center
- Silver A' Design Award 2023 in Architecture
- CLIENT: Idealiza Cidades
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 15,755
- Verification code 8245426BE6 · Verify this award
Colors
About Casa Una Community Center
In a park in the city of Uberlandia, Brazil stands Casa Una, a community center and gathering space for park visitors and neighborhood residents. In addition to other uses, it has an open auditorium, a food hall, an office for the neighborhood association, and an exhibition space. Built with a laminated timber structure, the building uses energy-saving passive ventilation and thermal comfort techniques. Lastly, the roof is topped with three species of vegetation covered in a geometric pattern, reducing the heat gained from solar exposure and acting as a fifth facade when viewed from above.
About the Silver A' Design Award
Casa Una Community Center is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Casa Una Community Center is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Casa Una Community Center is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Casa Una is a multi-purpose community center that will serve as a focal point for a new mixed-use neighborhood in the city of Uberlandia, Brazil. Located in a public park that is the heart of the new neighborhood, the building houses a food hall, an open auditorium, an exhibition space and an office for the community association. It also houses a social program for high school students of the public education system.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- 1099 square meters
55 by 28 meters
9 meters height - Tags
- wood, sustainable, community center, green roof, public building
- Production Technology
- For the building structure, we used laminated timber from certified sources and left it exposed. The roof is composed of OSB panels and a vegetation system that helps cool the interior spaces. The building is cooled even further with the use of passive techniques such as cross ventilation and heat exhaust openings. All the exterior openings were fit with glass that reduces solar heat gain.
- Design Challenge
- Our main challenge creatively with this building was how to negotiate between the different functions and their relationship with the public park. Each space needed differing heights, with the optimal solution being curved roof that adjusted to the needs of each interior use. As the building is placed in a prominent position on a public park, it had to adjust its form to a lake towards the south and a curved plaza to the north. The result was a curved form with a twisted curving roof.
- Research
- For this project, we researched timber construction, specially the flexibility and sustainability of the system. We also studied the local climate, and with a hired consultant we ran several simulations to reduce the solar heat gain and reduce energy consumption for the building. Lastly, we researched lightweight vegetated roofing systems to attain the aesthetic and energy saving results while reducing the overall structural load.
- Inspiration
- For this project our main ambition was to have the building act as an extension of the public park. We looked to Brazilian Modernism and especially the work of architect Severiano Porto, with his organic forms made with timber, as inspiration. Formally, its main feature is the green roof, which appears to peel off from the park surface, extending its area. In plan, the curves of the building follow the adjoining lake and bring dynamism to its form, in effect transforming it at every new viewpoint.
- Project Duration
- The Project was started in August of 2018 and the building is expected to open to the public April 2023. The Building is located in Uberlandia in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.
- Operation Flow
- The building was organized along a central axis, with the main access to the north from the street and passage to the south, towards the lake. This central double height space features a welcoming lounge area and a model of the future neighborhood. To the west we have more functional spaces, such as office spaces, technical areas and bathrooms. To the east are the open auditorium, the food court and an elevated viewing platform.
- Image Credits
- Render #1: Fillipe Farias
Render #2: Fillipe Farias
Render #3: Fillipe Farias
Render #4: Fillipe Farias
Render #5: Fillipe Farias