NGARCHITETTI

PORTFOLIO

NZEB HOUSE

Description of the project: 

 “The beauty of being an architect is that you can walk in your dreams”, this stated the architect Harold Wagoner around the middle of the last century. The project of the NZEB house in S. Stefano in Monopoli was born precisely from desire of the designers, husband and wife, to create a place full of meanings, of light, of surfaces and pure volumes that it encloses as one casket their lives and that of their children. The particular ecological sensitivity of the architects has generated a highly innovative project which, while appearing contemporary in design, takes in itself many techniques and tricks taken from tradition to do in in order to have a fuel efficient enclosure for the heating and cooling. From this perspective, the differences in the building elevations should be seen, with small openings to the north and large to the south, but always shielded by special projections or pergolas designed specifically to allow the entry of sunlight into winter (when the sun is lower on the horizon) but not in summer. The roof on the first floor has a single pitch, inclined to the south in order to host 6.6 kw of photovoltaic panels with the best possible exposure and two solar thermal panels for the production of domestic hot water. Heating, cooling and hot water production are entrusted to a single electric heat pump that works properly for three months a year free thanks to the energy of the sun. The gas was not wanted, so even the kitchen hob uses clean energy, being induction. The design of the entire house develops all around a small cloister with access from the basement, which is oriented towards the breeze summer, therefore it generates a movement of fresh air which, recalled by the plane basement, it cools the upper floors in the summer, with windows overlooking that space and to the north. The exterior surfaces are all light with shades of white, including the terraces and the sloping roof tiles, in such a way as to reduce the summer heating due to radiation. The infill walls were made with blocks of insulating eco brick poroton type with vertical holes 30 cm thick and 10 cm of coat Isover Clima exterior by Saint Gobain, made of recycled fiberglass 80% and low VOC emissions.

A breathable siloxane coating, the Webercote Siloxcover R by Weber, was used as an external finish for the walls.

The windows are triple Oknoplast PVC glass, installed on Edilcass made up supports from monobloc thermal insulating shoulders (jambs and box) in material insulating. The green architecture solutions used, combined with materials and systems just listed, have ensured that the single-family house built in c. from S. Stefano to Monopoli are among the few NZEB houses built in Italy; acronym for Nearly Zero Energy Building, this term is used for define a building whose energy consumption is almost zero. 

The NZEBs, therefore, are very high performance buildings that reduce consumption for their operation and the harmful impact as much as possible on the environment. Finally the house got, in the level assessment tool environmental sustainability ITACA Puglia, an excellent score, which allowed for obtain from the Municipality of Monopoli a discount on the construction contribution and a volumetric bonus equal to 10%.

This project was selected by Saint-Gobain Italia among the best Italian projects that participate, every two years, in the Italian selections of the International Trophy Saint-Gobain Gyproc, a prestigious competition in which the most important interventions carried out all over the world take part. with the innovative Saint-Gobain Gyproc solutions. The NZEB house designed and built in Monopoli has recently been online on the architectural reference site www.sg-gallerylive.it.