Naturalmente Chic by Daniele Menichini

Location: Treviso, Italy
Year: 2013
Area: 678 sqft
Photo courtesy: Daniele Menichini
Description:

A new form of accommodation which guests can perceive as an educational game where grasping the opportunity to discover the very secret elements of green living, without giving up on the comfort and the emotional side of a holiday. An experience which makes guests appreciate how all the aspects of sustainable building maximise the exploitation of the environment energies and resources. The project’s objective is giving rise to a new hotel accommodation system that is tightly interwoven with its environment and leads to the quality improvement of the global tourism offer through the combination of different modular solutions, from bungalows with bathroom to two-room apartments. GREEN_ZERO represents the result of the co-operation of companies sharing the same green DNA, which is indeed the real value added at the basis of the development and implementation of the whole concept.

The GREEN_ZERO module is a prefabricated architectural system, in which the structural shell is made entirely from wood; it is provided with a frame and its stratigraphy, of both horizontal and vertical parts, is characterised by load-bearing and insulating elements, which allow the passage of installations, and the presence of an air chamber, created to obtain a specific assembly in accordance with climate conditions and thus being awarded the classification KlimaHaus A or KlimaHaus Gold. The cladding outer surface integrates a new thin photovoltaic panel system, which allows to supply the entire installation complex with the electrical power necessary to its functioning. The zinc-titanium membrane applied to this type of panel proves highly malleable and thus allows to perfectly fit the curved surfaces of the module and create all the technical elements fundamental to ventilation, management or recovery of rainwater.

Our responsibility towards the environment is in fact the leitmotif of the whole project, which blends the modular architecture of Green-Zero with the interior design of Naturalmente Chic: a double reference to both the “invisible project” and the “visible project”, meaning the building in its entirety, including the foundation and structural system, all installations and the use of local natural resources, as well as all finishing elements, lighting, furnishing and furniture, without forgetting the selection of suppliers and installers which have to ensure the highest possible standard of sustainability.

In particular, the project’s sustainability comes in the foreground in several elements, such as the photovoltaic cells covering the outside surface of the shell and the use of water pumps with a maximum capacity of five litres per minute. All the rest is hidden underneath the “skin” of the shell, finally becoming its beating heart.

The success of this sustainable project depends on the synergy among well-educated costumers, integrated planning processes, budget maximisation, project management and companies’ selection, all oriented towards the creation of a system which strives to be entirely sustainable, also in economic terms.