SCHOOL IN COLONIA, URUGUAY

The issue of sustainability has transformed the design processes of architects and engineers, turning them into a bioclimatic position interacting with other disciplines. There has been a shift from the “mechanical” to the “energetic” paradigm. The modern theory of modulation based on serialization and industrial materiality has been abandoned for a new concept where energy is integrated to the architecture. In this regard, the Architect Iñaki Abalos argues that in this new context, architects must design buildings as living organisms, and solve their proposals with permanent energy exchanges with its environment. As well, within this line of reasoning, the Architect Sanford Kwinter has not hesitated to call it thermodynamic architecture and the Architect Mario Cucinella believes that buildings are solutions (rather than obstacles) for sustainable access to energy and natural resources and they act as a catalyst for urban regeneration when promoting sustainable construction practices.

To move toward this new approach it is necessary to abandon established traditional practices in favour of new combinations towards an integrated project. Therefore we have to redefine the relationship between architecture and engineering as not only technological, but genetic. It consist on a new operative dimension, a new territory where architecture, landscape and environmental techniques are combined, a new approach for projective practices, sharing and expanding its disciplinary area looking forward to an hybrid aesthetic where massive energy building systems come together with high technology. We need to have a holistic approach between architecture, energy and technology.