IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

Villa Mairea, designed by Alvar Aalto in 1937-39 has been widely studied as an important event in the history of Modern architecture, mainly because of its aesthetic achievements in the synthesis of Modern architectural language, techniques and materials with the local cultural and landscape conditions. However there is no in-depth investigation into how the climatic conditions of this region were a determining factor in the design decisions implemented in this project and on the experimental application of thermal insulation techniques with industrialized materials. This paper intended to find out if Alvar Aalto intentions and decisions were indeed appropriate and efficient for the climate conditions of Pori Finland, by assessing these projects using BIM models and energy performance simulations from Design Builder using the Energy Plus weather data files. Accurate models were built using original historical data through archival research. The outcome is to provide a new understanding of the environment of this house through the combination of modern building science and architectural history. The results confirm that in this experimental house, it was achieved a model of low energy consumption. Even though the design methods of Alvar Aalto were apparently not very scientific and rational the energy performance of Villa Mairea achieves the contemporary benchmark standards for the Passive House certification with a very low energy consumption in Kwh/m2. This paper contributes new evidence not only on exemplary modern architecture concerned with environmental performance but also on how it developed progressive thinking in this direction.