Environmental Comfort as a Sustainable Strategy for Housing Integration: The AURA 1.0 Prototype for Social Housing

Abstract

The AURA 1.0 prototype is a sustainable social housing proposal, designed by the University of Seville and built for the first Latin American edition of the prestigious Solar Decathlon competition. Different conditioning strategies were integrated into this prototype, optimized for a tropical climate, and focused on contributing positively to the health of the most humble people in society. In this moment, in which a large part of the world population is confined to their homes due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we have the opportunity (and the obligation) to reconsider the relationship between architecture and medicine or in other words, between the daily human habitat and health. For this reason, this analysis of aspects derived from the interior conditioning of the homes is carried out. The main objective of the Aura proposal is to be able to extract data through a housing monitoring system, which allows us to transfer some design strategies to the society to which is a case study, in order to promote environmental comfort and, therefore, people’s health. The AURA 1.0 prototype develops flexible and adaptable living spaces, with a high environmental quality, in order to maintain the variables of temperature, relative humidity and natural lighting within a range of comfort required by the rules of the event. To achieve this end, the prototype develops an architectural proposal that combines passive and active conditioning strategies, using construction qualities and typical costs of social housing. These strategies allowed the project to achieve the first prize in the Comfort Conditions test. So, this paper presents an appropriate and tested solution that can satisfy comfortability and health of residents who live in social housing while maintaining low energy consumption.

Confinement, Comfort and Health: Analysis of the Real Influence of Lockdown on University Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The methodology employed in this study was the result of an ongoing process undertaken by members of the University of Seville HUM-965 Research Group to find an optimal, reliable methodology for grading comfort and its impact on the health of individuals [ 37 ]. This methodology has been tested in various editions of the Solar Decathlon, the housing prototype competition in which the University of Seville has participated [ 38 , 39 , 40 ].…”

Tools for the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in the Design of an Urban Environmental and Healthy Proposal. A Case Study

“…The SD competitions are a great opportunity for exploration, since they are based on a line of research whose fundamental purpose is the search for living models [39] that minimize the environmental impact based on the convergence toward H2020, according to UNESCO's SDGs for 2030 [40] and the related Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) [27]. This is based on the conviction that in the search for more habitable, healthy, resilient and, therefore, sustainable city models, sensitive to bioclimatic strategies of adaptation to the climate and the supporting ecosystem, and aimed at maximizing efficiency in the use of resources, healthy future building archetypes [41] will be found and, particularly, new urban models of approach to the city will be defined [40]. The time has come to address SDGs in higher education [27,40], meaning that their necessary innovative practical implementation [42] is crucial for this research.…”

“…Design decisions based on them define the formulation of potential situations of habitability, in terms of comfort and health, and a more sustainable management of the urban space. The architects cannot decide for the user-citizen, but they can design the appropriate conditions of habitability and spatial quality, as well as a more sustainable management, which will incite an improvement in the user-citizen's quality of life [41].…”

Double-Skin Facades for Thermal Comfort and Energy Efficiency in Mediterranean Climate Buildings: Rehabilitating Vulnerable Neighbourhoods

“…In this case, the research on the Aura Strategy in San Pablo, Seville focuses on the urban regeneration intervention of a neighbourhood of obsolete social housing, built in the 1960s (following the guidelines employed in AURA 3.1). One of the actions will be to test one of the passive conditioning strategies developed for the AURA 1.0 project: the double skin [43]. urban regeneration intervention of a neighbourhood of obsolete social housing, built in the 1960s (following the guidelines employed in AURA 3.1).…”