Performative Laundry Lattice
The goal of this project is to improve the overall energy performance and lower the occupants energy costs in an existing 20 story, South facing apartment building in Pheonix, Arizona. The context presents 2 specific challenges that are addressed with this intervention, which are optimized parametrically to meet solar, wind and functional criteria necessary to the project.
The south and west faces receive an excessive amount of direct sunlight on the glazing, and Pheonix has nearly no cloud cover most of the year to block and scatter these rays. The main challenge of the project is to fully shade the units during the hottest times of the year, May-September, from 11am-5pm. These will reduce the overall energy level of the existing building, and create a more passive strategy of reaching a comfortable level in the apartments.
The auxiliary challenge is to deal with and utilize Phoenix's extremely arid climate. To address this issue the intervention will deal with the usually mundane and routine act of drying laundry. The dryer is one of the most expensive pieces of equipment to operate at a residential level for the occupant, costing between $300-600 annually for a family. Given Pheonix's arid climate, laundry hung outdoors to dry can dry quicker than most places. The water that evaporates from the laundry is harnessed accordingly, to help counteract the arid environment and create a more comfortable environment inside the apartments, as they have sliding glass doors and operable windows to let in the cooler, moister air, coming from the laundry.
The 'Laundry Lattice' addresses the issues of shading, humidifying, and drying clothes in tandem, as the lattice itself will provide some shading for existing apartments, and the subsequent articles hung in it will provide additional shading, and the benefits mentioned above. It will add color and dynamics to the mundane existing facade, as well as save its occupants money, while reducing the overall cooling load on the building envelope.
