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Maja Villa
Academic Project
Status: Concept
Site Location: Baton Rouge, LA
Designer: Javier Villarroel
Instructor: Thomas Kirchner, AIA, LEED AP, BD+C
MaJa Villa is a residential apartment designed for an opera singer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Exact location is on East Lake shore Drive across the lake from Louisiana State University. This lake allows for evaporative cooling and cross ventilation to work together to passively ventilate and cool the building. The S.A.B.E.R. wall placed along breezeways filter out humidity from the air that travels into the building. this optimizes conditions for the client, due to an increased need for humidity in order to facilitate singing. The moisture that the S.A.B.E.R. wall system collects is sent to a cistern along with the rain water gathered from the customized sloped roof. The roof angles to one point which has a water catching funnel for water to be stored. Water collected is used as grey water. The roof over the studio is a green roof to allow less heat to transfer to the studio. Baton Rouge gets about 60” of rain a year so excess rain that isn’t collected is drained back into the lake. Concrete walls are used as a thermal mass to keep the interior at a consistent comfortable temperature.
Evaporative
Cooling
+
Cross
Ventilation
Vegetation Utilized
For Shading
Building Raised
On Piles

Site Analysis

Conceptual Program Sketch

Floor Plan

Interior View




S.A.B.E.R.
Self Adjusting Building Envelope Regulation
The S.A.B.E.R. project is an independent study by Maria-Paz Gutierrez (Architect), Luke Lee (Bio-Engineer), and Slawomir Hermanowicz (Civil and Environmental Engineer) and was used an essential mechanism to passively maintain human comfort levels in terms of cooling and humidity within the building.
**All renderings and diagrams of the S.A.B.E.R. project within Maja Villa is produced by Javier Villarroel, Abeer Turkey and Jessica Martin in order to explain its function and process.
Roll to roll processing technique
Nano Imprint Lithography

Work stations on the first floor will be a continuing part of the textile generating tradition, with novel machines that take up a fraction of the space that would be necessary to produce textiles. Not only that, but the textile itself will have solar cells embedded, using a process called nano imprint lithography for the production of solar cells. With this technique large scale solar cell embedded textiles will be able to be produced in bulk.

The microgens allow for light to enter the cell, the Plano Convex form disperses it inside to reach the hydrogel inside.
Hydrogel filling most of the cell is photo-active, and will contract in response to light, forcing the elastometric venturi tube inside to expand and collapse.
The result is a pressure contro system where light intensity dictates airflow through the venturi tube.
Cell One Phases

Cell Two Phases

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