Feb162023
ArchitectureDesignSuccess stories

Simon Architecture Prize 2022 – winner of the #PersonalPlaces category

 

Property: Rambla Climate-House
Place: Molina de Segura, Murcia
Project: Andrés Jaque / Office For Political Innovation + Miguel Mesa Del Castillo
Photos: José Hevia
The Rambla Climate-House is a single-family house that functions as a climate device. It is part of independent civic initiatives that aim to repair the environmental damage caused by excessive urbanization in Molina de Segura, which began in the 1980s. In this area, the topography of the land has been significantly flattened and the system of ravines (ramblas) destroyed. The latter were created as a result of seasonal rainfall in a fairly dry landscape. They collect moisture and attract plants that have a positive effect on the quality of the surrounding air.
The building collects the rain that accumulates on the roof and the water used in the showers and sinks to irrigate the remains of the ravines and thus regenerate their ecosystems. Within a year of such automated activity, myrtles, mastics, thornworts, palms and oleanders grow in the elliptical section of the rambla. Among such vegetation, birds, insects and lagomorphs found a new home.

Rambla Climate-House is a building that fits into the needed trend of engaged architecture, responding to the great challenges of the present day – e.g. the climate crisis and the decline in biodiversity. It is the collective work of the architectural team with activists and ecologists, which resulted in finding a way to regenerate a very damaged ecosystem, which the authorities failed to repair. It proves that private space can be part of a wider program to repair the environmental damage that results from over-exploitation of the planet by man. The facility is an act of social activism that promotes a change in thinking about home – as a place that cares for the surrounding fauna and flora in an optimistic way. It was located around the elliptical part of the rambla, like an observatory of a reconstructed landscape.