Philippe Rahm: a building as a convective form

The design of this condominium building is based on the natural law of Archimedes that makes the warm air rises while the cold air falls. Very often in an apartment, a real difference of temperature could be measured between the floor and the ceiling, a difference that could be of 10 °C sometime. Depending on our physical activities and the thickness of the clothes we wear, the temperature of a room doesn't have to be at the same level everywhere in the apartment. Because we are protected by the blanket in the bed, the temperature of the bedroom could be reduce to 16° Celsius. In the kitchen, because we are dressed up and physically active, we could have a temperature of the space at 18°C. The living room is often heated at 20°Celsius because we are dressed up but whitout moving, staying motionless in the sofa. The bathroom is the warmest space of the apartment because we are naked in it.

Staying at these precise temperatures in these specific areas could economize a lot of energy by reducing the level of the temperature to the exact needs. Related to these physical and manner thermal figures, we propose to fit the apartment into different deepness, different heights, the space where we will sleep will be more low while the bath will be more high in altitude.

The apartment become like a thermal landscape, with his different altitude of heat, where the inhabitant could freely wander inside like in a natural landscape, looking for specific thermal qualities related to seasons or the moment of the day. By a deformation of the horizontal slabs of the floors, different heights of the spaces are created with different temperatures. The deformation of the slabs give also to the building his outside appearance.

In thermodynamics, energy transfer by heat can occur between objects by radiation, conduction and convection. Convection is usually the dominant form of heat transfer in gases. This term characterises the combined effects of conduction and fluid flow. In convection, enthalpy transfer occurs by the movement of hot or cold portions of the fluid together with heat transfer by conduction. Commonly an increase in temperature produces a reduction in density. Hence, when air is heated, hot air rises, displacing the colder denser air, which falls. In this free convection, gravity and buoyancy forces drive the fluid movement.

If the process of the design follow the new goal of energy reduction linked to the recommendations of the sustainable development, it especially offer, through this new constraints, some new shapes and new ways of living.

Philippe Rahm