Agg Hab, or Aggregate Habitation, is a prototype for a different approach to creating spaces. It proposes an alternative, low impact way of building and living together.
Designed remotely, online, and at home by a team of seven designers and then built by three of them who chose to socially distance together, the project is an experiment in low impact (affordable, minimal interference in the landscape, decreased carbon footprint, reduced time and labor needed) constructions for essential shelters.
The prototype is composed of two mirrored, convexo-concave holes, cast with multiple layers of an organic, papier-mâché made of recycled paper and wheat paste. The casts are then removed and flipped over to form duplicate, bulbous, paper shells, measuring four millimeters thick and spanning six meters. The inverted form of one hole becomes a paraboloid cap to the other and encloses the structure. The prototypes stand 1.4-meter above the ground with close to three-meter ceiling space. All materiel are biodegradable, yet surprisingly resistant to weather.
Responding to social distancing measures, each dome only allows a few people to gather at the same time. Yet the number of structures can be high to create a village of socially distancing pods. The construction technique allows a small group of people to create interior spaces with minimum time, means, and impact. The bulbous aspect of the project refuses the typical post and beam shape of the primitive hut that modernism inevitably derives from. On the contrary, it constitutes a reference to the seventies utopian experiments in inflatables but proposes an alternative using only renewable materials (recycled paper, water, and flour) rather than being a petroleum-fueled utopia. Based on the principals of deep ecology, Agg Hab aims to interfere as little as possible with its environment while style providing sheltered spaces.
Text by Noémie Despland-Lichtert from Roundhouse
Concept, Drawing, and Pictures by Roundhouse and i/thee