ECO Oriel

The idea for sustainable urban construction is to return to the idea of a bay window. ECOORIEL allows you to restore the facade of urban greenery so well known for its pots in medieval windows. The oriel used for centuries, today forgotten by architects, allows you to transfer solutions from single-family ErthShip homes to city centers. The presented solution is possible to use for planned and existing buildings. Eartship is a combination of a passive solar shelter in the ground. Features that were successfully transferred to ECOORIEL are: insolation (maximum in winter and minimum in summer), gray water utilization by (potted) plants, cooling and humidifying the air in summer and heating the air in winter. All these features contribute to a smaller use of electricity to heat or cool rooms indoors. Thus, they positively affect the sustainable development of urban construction. Especially existing buildings. EartShip is an idea transformed into numerous projects around the world. In Europe, the first facility of this type was built in 2000 in Belgium. Four years later it is created in Great Britain (2004) and then in 2007 in France. Currently, the facilities have been completed or are being built in Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Estonia and the Czech Republic. “In their most basic form, EarthShips are structures that heat and cool themselves without electric heat, burning fossil fuels or wood. Thirty percent of all energy generated worldwide is used for heating and cooling buildings. Utilizing thermal mass and solar gain, EarthShips are able to maintain a comfortable temperature without additional fuels in any climate in the world.

The structural walls of the building are formed of used car tires tightly filled with soil. These "thermal bricks", which weigh about 300 pounds each, are hammered into place and laid like bricks, forming the load-bearing walls of the roof. The tires are also wide enough to eliminate the need for a concrete foundation. Densely packed walls, considered as self-supporting monolithic walls, also store temperature (heat or cold), because their solidity gives them the quality of thermal mass. The basic idea is to surround each living space with mass on three sides and align the southern side of the building with windows. The sun enters through the glass and heats the mass of floors and walls. In the evening, when the air temperature drops below the wall temperature, heat is naturally released into the space. In summer, when the sun is high in the sky, the building stays cool at constant earth temperatures. We strengthen the cooling thanks to natural ventilation through buried cooling pipes and supported ventilation boxes. The sun enters through the glass and heats the mass of floors and walls.” 2

Glass: the front angled allows the use of light by penetrating the room in winter (heating) and shading in summer (reducing heat emission). In addition, front glazing is responsible for collecting rainwater through its curvature, increases exposure to rain, increasing the efficiency of this harvest per square meter. The side glazing fulfills the task of safety barriers for the user without reducing his view from the rooms. All glazing also serves to increase the sound insulation of building partitions, reducing the noise of the city inside a building or a protected room. Flower pots: designed as steel elements also stiffening the whole bay window structure. Their arched cross-section is designed to maximize the exposure of solar potted plants. Filled with soil or spongy material, they create the possibility of vegetation while storing rainwater from front glazing. This function minimizes the need for additional watering of plants. Panels: permanently fixed front panels fulfill the same structural role as flower pots but additionally are a facade for movable internal panels that control the air flow from outside. The need to install mesh between external panels against insects gives the possibility of using replaceable filters to reduce dust in the building's rooms. Installation to the building facade: takes place horizontally, in the upper and lower bays of the bay window. In modern construction, these strips are used as ceiling fixing points, one of the strongest facades. The proposed assembly allows hanging of the bay window structure on existing and planned buildings.

Reduction of energy demand: we get through solar exposure. In cold periods (winter - autumn), the sun lowers its parabola in the daytime cycle (east - west) so that more sunlight gets into the room through the curvature of the bay window's front. Thus, heats the floor of the room, reducing the need for additional energy to heat the interior. The same principle is used in warm periods (summer - spring), when the sun raises its parabola in the daily cycle, thanks to which the curvature of the bay window of the upper floor creates a shadow limiting the penetration of the room. Lower interior temperature during air-conditioned periods reduces energy for lowering the temperature to the standard building environment. Bay window ventilation: has been divided into three elements. Exhaust air located at the top of the bay window and two air vents - summer and winter. In order to adapt to the 4 seasons cycle, like the involvement of the sun, the bay window is equipped with lockable front panels and a permanently open bottom airflow panel. In the warm period, the increased ventilation area allows for free circulation of gravitational ventilation forced by the temperature difference at the front glazing. In addition, air compression through the panels and expansion inside the bay reduces its temperature while moistened with a water tank (pots) and greenery. The possibility of closing the front panels in the cold period (winter) forces the outside air to be sucked in through the bottom gap that is always open. The slot (as shown in the detail) has a spiral tube over the full width of the bay, increasing the air path. The extension of the air entry path inwards allows it to be heated by the building's heat loss on the facade during the heating period. With the bay window assembly (one above the other), you can maintain a constant vertical airflow for all the bay windows, using a constant increase of air temperature through the facade.