Are you ready for a flying house? Well, we may have to wait for that but architects RVTR in Toronto Canada are at least using some of the same processes to build houses as the airline industry uses to manufacture more efficient planes. In describing the parallel Paul Raff of RVTR said, “…you can have precisely controlled building components that can be highly efficient and rapidly assembled.”

That’s important because judging by RVTR’s recent design called Latitude they are interested in solving the longer term question of how to produce sustainable housing, as opposed to just “green building.”

Competing For Russia
Latitude came about as a result of the annual Living Steel (a steel industry organization) competition that challenged entrants to design housing for a small steel-mill city in Russia. Latitude won an award but not the overall competition, perhaps due to the fact that their entry actually addressed issues outside the strict competition mandate which may have put RVTR a little at odds with the judges’ instructions.

If that was the case it wouldn’t be the first time RVTR charted a different course, in fact Mr. Raff believes some of the “green” design movement is flying in the wrong direction, noting that sustainable design is about providing more freedom and choices rather than less, or as he says, “Instead of trying to reduce the amount of glass to reduce energy loss in a house, we should look for advanced…glazing technology to deliver more natural light for a healthier more luxurious lifestyle.”

Sustainable Houses For Everyone
Which brings us back to Latitude – the house design is luxurious, modern, and sustainable – but Latitude is more than just a house design, it’s a component-based system that can be employed by others to develop a sustainable housing industry for the masses (which explains why this article is about Latitude and not the competition’s outright winner).

Not that green building in a vacuum isn’t important, but using green techniques that vary house by house can’t sufficiently impact the larger issues surrounding sustainable living – the problem is too big.

Even though Latitude includes typical green saving measures such as using low energy and low water appliances and fixtures, natural daylight and ventilation, that’s just the design’s beginning. Latitude is also a planned system that integrates and connects the larger energy infrastructure in order to maximize efficiency for a whole community of houses.

A Steel Sandwich
Latitude starts with individual prefab modules that define basic needs such as washrooms and kitchens (these can aggregate into townhouse or duplex configurations as well). The ground floor and roof are comprised of a tri-layer composite of distributed steel, a highly efficient exterior insulation, and either integrated hydronic heating for the floor or a skin of Phase-Change plaster for the ceiling. Phase Change Materials developed by BASF can store and release large amounts of energy, and Hydronics is the process of using water as a heat transfer medium.

The wall panel system in Latitude is a series of highly insulated steel sandwich panels, high efficiency glazing panels of varying transparency and operable louver panels that modulate solar gain and shading for passive cooling in summer and passive heating in winter.

A Future To Look Up To
The real award for Latitude though is being a component plan that is flexible and adaptable to the future. The various modules that are prefabbed locally can be developed into the specific needs and wants of the community, and may meet density standards as high as 30 units per acre. And if food for example becomes overly expensive in a community, highly efficient green houses in Latitude make it possible to grow local produce.

In a future world of more scarcity where cities and communities may need to rethink their current direction, Latitude could at the very least be a jumping off point for the anchor of change. And to be frank, there are a lot of cities in the US in need of answering that call. No doubt it is a bold shift in the status quo but we are now beginning to see where the status quo in the US housing market has led us.

If highly efficient and sustainable communities that are modern, luxurious, well designed and employ both passive and active energy systems while integrating a local manufacturing base to help solve the problem of affordable housing in the new economy is what we seek, then perhaps Latitude and similar system components by like-thinking advanced architects can take us there.

Whether or not that whole idea manifests itself in a flying house, well, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Media: RVTR Latitude