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Remedium: Seven Detached Houses for Environmental Restoration

2022

Remedium on One House Per Day︎



︎︎︎  Compost House belongs to many time periods. It is heavy, durable, and permanent. It will stand many centuries in the future or stood many centuries in the past. Its longevity is the most important aspect of its sustainability, not how its materials are used or where they come from, but that they remain, ruined and unwasted. Here, its walls retain compost that is continuously aerated from pumps on the roof and hydrated from condensation tanks below grade.



︎︎︎  Reforestation House is a material infrastructure for growing trees. Here, seeds that are believed to produce the healthiest and fastest growing trees are collected and used to grow seedlings that are then planted within the species’ natural geographic range. The house employs the minimum necessary means to suggest a domestic architecture. A simple post and beam structure encloses an area of soil to enact a framework for temporary domestic spaces. It exists first for trees, then for everyone else.



︎︎︎  Soil Solarization House implements solarization to regenerate soil on degraded land. It covers an area of ground with a transparent polyethylene cover to trap solar energy and regenerate soil composition. The plastic is repurposed as a greenhouse cover over a detached peristyle. An enfilade of rooms lines an edge of the peristyle and contains spaces for both living and garden management.



︎︎︎  Conservation Grazing House is a cooperative apparatus that grazes domestic livestock to improve soil conditions for grassland plants and animals. Rows of vertical walls define a linear datum for the grazing. This corridor of space collects and collectivizes land, rather than privatizing it, to provide universal access and make space available for both housing and ecological restoration. Nature is the precondition and objective of this architecture.



︎︎︎  Lean-to House is a structural, analogical idea about cross-laminated timber panels. It is made from 10 panels and refers to the primitive “lean-to” where a roof leans on a wall. It also refers to the logistical concept of “lean” by eliminating waste and streamlining the construction process in a way that has minimum impact on the soil and relies on the least possible amount of building trades for construction.



︎︎︎  Seaweed Farming House cultivates, produces, and grows seaweed to rebuild marine ecosystems via the symbiotic relationship between fish, seaweed, and mussels. It cultivates seaweed and kelp as a natural carbon sink that needs zero input – no freshwater, no fertilizer, no feed. This house is not entirely a solution; it’s a domestic analogy for ecological maintenance.  



︎︎︎  River Restoration House is a vector for river restoration through the removal of obsolescent dams. It is made almost entirely from the repurposed rubble of a river dam – aggregate, gabion walls, and a stone foundation. Every component of the interior is moveable and can be composed in whatever way. Like a dam, it contains anything that ends up in it. By defining space in this way, it is an open work for human, animal, and plant life.




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