As with all projects I had to abandon my comfort zone in the world of Blender and other tool modelling softwares, to develop a 1:10 scale model of a corner of one of the buildings I had designed. The objective was to show the materials that make up the layers of the envelope, within the building structure.
Unfortunately I had not been able to complete my model before leaving the UK so I had to construct it in Italy. Luckily one of my cousins is a bit of an artist so I was able to borrow essentials such as a glue gun and rulers, a few wooden boards. The rest I had to make do with what I could find at one of the local stores and what I could recycle from my grandparents attic and garage (including old wiring which I used to recreate the underfloor heating pipes)!
I decided to work on the corner of one of the dwellings which backs onto the 'gabion'. As I progressed I realised that I had underestimated the amount of space I would need for the external walls (which would impact my designs). As I did more research I realised I hadn't thought of obvious things such as 'where will all the services run'? I also had to find out more about how the under floor heating system would impact the structure of the lower part of the construction particularly if it had to meet Passivhaus standards! Having looked at a number of options I decided to opt for aluminium spreaders which could sit on the timber joists.
In addition, I needed to find ways of increasing the depth of the insulation (which I had decided should be sheep wool), and twin studs seemed to be an ideal solution, although it added to the size of the the exterior walls.
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