Thermal Autonomy

Status: Academic - GSAPP

Typology: Housing

Location: Bronx, NY

Professor: Erica Goetz

In collaboration with Allison Jane Shahidi

Year: 2020

A reconsideration of the limited understanding of comfort is needed. Thermal Autonomy challenges the static notion of comfort, and gives authority to the residents to control their microclimate. Our site strategy focuses on creating an environment which establishes comfort by utilizing the breezeway to respond to the climate of our site with a particular focus on sun, light, and wind. Voids and negative spaces are used as public space which, while serving both programmatic and functional purposes, also serve as the main component used to establish comfort. We are thinking about air as a tool which can be leveraged to sustainably provide comfort, providing both a means for heating when confined and natural ventilation when allowed to flow freely.

At the site scale, the breezeway serves as a public atrium which is naturally ventilated in the summer and serves to provide heat to the adjacent masses in the winter. At unit scale, careful attention to the relationship between the unit and the breezeway allows for the establishment of comfort. Access to exterior and atrium facing terraces as well as control of operable windows which allow for both natural lighting and cross ventilation in the scissor-stair and skip-stop units allow the resident to take control of their comfort.

The embodied cultural and environmental energy of the site are preserved by restoring and adding to the existing structures. The careful additions to the existing buildings carry the same design strategies and language that is used in the new buildings, and these strategies are also incorporated at an urban scale to create a new park. The project aims to provide residents with a holistic meaning of sustainability.