AGi architects have obtained the awards Concept Design of the Year, thanks to their project for the date plantation and farmhouse Seed House, and Boutique Firm of the Year at 2014 Middle East Architect Awards. Winners were announced yesterday evening in Dubai.
The Concept Design of the Year, Seed House, is a holistic response to inhabit the desert, which is being built at a huge plot of 60,000 square meters located on an area of traditional farms for date’s production. From this plot, we have conceived a small sustainable city layout.
The decision of the most suitable landscape solution, is the fruit of an investigation about the place, the climate and the predominant winds. That’s how we found the way for the house to be located on safe and comfortable microclimate, by retaining dust coming from sand storms and by providing humidity on the dry winds. Placing a vegetation barrier consisted of artifitial lakes and middle height trees, on the North East of the construction, we succeed in reducing temperature and dust amount when it reaches the house.
The house is surrounded by date’s farms, but its running course is hidden for the inhabitants thanks to some Mediterranean fruit trees. It is, therefore, a kind of private oasis, which plot is limited by hydoponic vegetable farms.
The roof is being treated as semiarid landscape in which only the sunken gardens near the water table will receive irrigation. While the house remains protected from the sun and the wind by a landscaping roof, embedded on the terrain. This was, not only the best sustainable pasive strategy, but also the best way for the family to get privacy. Besides, as sustainable active strategy, modern coolling, chilling units and traditional air convection methods will be installed.
Regarding to the Boutique Firm of the Year award, this is the second time that the design firm, established in 2006 by architects Nasser Abulhasan and Joaquin Perez-Goicoechea, wins this award which also got in 2012.
This prize recognizes those firms with less than 50 employees that have made the most significant impact on the GCC region through their work throughout the year. The company is getting closer to reaching that number of employees because of its strengthening and continued growth over the years.
For the design firm it means recognizing the efforts and dedication of the international, multicultural and interdisciplinary team of over 40 people in the Madrid and Kuwait offices, which allow them to be sensitive to many social conditions considered in their projects.
In addition, another two works have become finalists of this edition: Nirvana House, in the Residential Project of the Year category; and Cardiac Research and Rehabilitation Center in the Public Sector of the Year category.
These two awards obtained at the Middle East Architect Awards 2014 are to be added to the other five MEAA obtained in the 2013 and 2012 editions:
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