Team Casa FENIX is a bi-national team composed of students and faculty members from the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (UTFSM), Valparaíso, Chile and from the Institute Universitaire de Technologie (IUT), Université de La Rochelle, France. In addition to all the opportunities that arise out of any international collaboration between academic institutions, team Casa FENIX seeks to respond coherently to SDE’s energy conservation objectives. The proposal has been designed to address the circumstances and needs of Chile. However, transporting the house from Chile to France would entail a significant amount of CO2 emissions and the team has therefore set itself the goal of making a “prototype” in Chile and a “replica” in France, generating a dualism and a double challenge for our project. So, while the conceptual proposal is Chilean, the production of Casa FENIX is French. Thus team Casa FENIX uses the common conceptual idea of creating an emergency dwelling for a sustainable reconstruction to respond to the Chilean context of constant catastrophes, as stated in our problem and hypothesis, where each participant’s expertise is drawn on in the development of the project.
The Chilean part of the team is in charge of all the theoretical, conceptual, architecture and urban design content of the project, where one of the strength of UTFSM is their research and work on bioclimatic architecture and earthquake resistant construction. Casa FENIX addresses all the Chilean issues related to catastrophes, the geographic and climatic variety, and the cultural and economic aspects, among others. The design of Casa FENIX has been developed in Chile with the participation of the French students during the process. Half of Casa FENIX will constitute the prototype built and to be tested in Valparaiso.
Casa FENIX, Valparaíso, ChileThe French part of the team is in charge of all the practical, construction, building and technology application of the project, where one of the strength of IUT is their research and work on wood structure and construction. A complete version of a replica of Casa FENIX is built in La Rochelle and it is the version that will compete in Versailles. The entire construction has been done in France with the participation of Chilean students. All the construction, engineering, materials and technology aspects of the replica are adapted to comply with the SDE and French standards for the competition in Versailles; for Chilean normative and standards are less demanding.
Casa FENIX, La Rochelle, France