The House of Tomorrow with Arthur Casas

As architects we need to understand how we can improve the concept of the house.” This was one of the closing remarks Arthur Casas made at what was a glimpse of the future. As part of DC Architecture week, LA.IDEA DC in partnership with ESPASSO and the Embassy of Brazil, hosted a presentation to introduce the N.O.V.A. Project, Brazilian architect Arthur Casas’ design for the “House of Tomorrow”. During the presentation Casas pointed out that home architecture hasn’t evolved very much over the past 30 years, for this reason it is important to design homes which are “smarter”. He emphasized that the N.O.V.A Project began as a crowdsource during which 4,000 members of the public offered ideas for what they would like to see in the house, and some of those ideas, like a meteorological station and co-working space, were incorporated into the design. Everyone who attended the event got a sneak peek at the construction process, materials used and technologies incorporated in the house. Some innovative and key features of the house include: elevated grid comprised of slabs with plastic balls between them, allowing space for plumbing, electrical wiring and any new technology in the future; pre-fabricated modules for the living spaces; laminated wood roof system; solar panels; electrically-controlled glass windows for cross ventilation; a bio-digester which will convert daily food and animal waste into clean cooking gas; among other. In addition, Casas was very proud to announce that the house is the only one in Latin America that has achieved Living Building Challenge certification thus far. If you would like to visit the N.O.V.A. house prototype, it is located in Niterol, Brazil, just a bridge away from Rio de Janeiro. The evening concluded with great conversations of the project focused on scalability, cost and accessibility in order to implement it in other settings. Casas passion for the project and the idea of LAB LIVING inspired all of us.