The thesis project of Simone Di Muro and Marianna Radaelli with supervision of Marco Imperadori.
The building site is located in Bozen, near Austria in North-East of Italy.
It is possible to build only temporary building, mainly thinked for seasonal workers.
Buildings are inspired to the traditional rural farm (called "Masi") that can be found all over the mountains nearby, basement is heavy stone and upper floors are built with light wood-frame structure. Inspired by this concept we thinked a building with a fixed heavy basement and a light structure thermal insulated with straw-bale.
The technological testing try to reveal the practical use of straw as insulated material and test PCM (Phase Changing Material) in order to increase the thermal inertia with no use of heavy material as concrete or stone. We test PCM's on vertical application in a screen and, thanks to Velux Italia, we were also able to test them in a roof-window application; for the straw-bale we realized a test-building inspired to our thesis project.
Results were very interesting: even if PCM are light, they can gain heat and release it with an interesting time gap providing to light-building (not based on concrete construction technique) a good thermal inertia. Straw is a good insulated material: it is cheap, easy to find, easy to use and has excellent insulated properties.
