Budapest – where our team resides – has a beautiful historic city centre built with lovely narrow streets. However its familiar features hold a disadvantage as well.
As the urbanization process kept the elder boundaries of the downtown, countless blocks has arisen, left their newly built courtyards with immense dark areas, and forcing six-storey façades onto the narrow streets.
The building, which we live in, shares the same characteristics. It is located in a magnificent environment next to the Danube River in Belgrád rakpart, but unfortunately situated in the dark, locked away from direct sunlight.
The flats on the external side all have enormous windows overlooking the Danube. On the other hand the atrium inside the building is a tube-like dark court where only a tiny amount of indirect solar gain is traceable and thus affecting the quality of life of the inhabitants. This common situation in the city inspired us to solve the global problem of these courtyards’ lighting.
The main purpose was to make these buildings more convenient for living, therefore the concept is aiming to bring light to dark areas, accomplished by utilizing mirrors. The plan involves the merely aesthetic courtyard walls in order to make the U-shaped court reflecting sunlight to the flats.
The design takes account of the significant seasonal-and-hourly positional changes of the sun, and the analysis of declination helped to create the eventual form of the installation. The whole organic shape is built up from stereometric mirrors. In the daytime they diffuse light around the court, thus increasing solar gains, while simultaneously they collect solar energy to provide the building electric power.
The designed installation betters the dwellings conveniences and improves the visual aesthetics as well. It can be constructed with economical and easily available leverages.
Before
After
At night
The project
After all, the global extent of this problem have become the heart of the project. The design utilizes renewable energy and existing natural resources in an innovative way. We hope this plan would not only solve the problems of this specific buildings but it would be possible to transfer to otherr urban situations as well.
