Balai Ani: House of Harvest

Known as Balai Ani, or "house of harvest," this future concept seeks to transform middle-income living in the Philippines by reorienting the housing typology. Affordable home layouts, financial constraints, developer profitability, and—above all—a disdain for appropriate climate comfort design have caused living standards in this market to stagnate for decades. Humbly attempting to address this, Balai Ani introduces innovations that give sustainable and climate-responsive design concepts top priority. These include using natural ventilation and shading to improve comfort, as well as using natural resources to save energy and water usage. Despite prioritizing sustainable design concepts, Filipino homeowners must also consider the affordability and accessibility of these advancements To address these issues, the team carried out an in-depth study on the national solar, heat, and weather patterns, ventilation and passive cooling design concepts, native materials, and contemporary building technologies that we may apply to accomplish our design objectives. Drawing on our research, our team decided to incorporate an incredible vertical courtyard into the small footprint of the house in order to add several amenities that would improve living conditions. The courtyard created the possibility to add natural lighting, an internal hydrophonic garden, and much-needed cross-ventilation and passive cooling throughout the house. Unlike most middle-class homes, which have walls dividing rooms, we incorporated an open-plan design throughout by splitting them into levels. We designed multipurpose "living spaces" that the residents can adapt to their requirements rather than designating areas as bedrooms. A privacy-enhancing partition allows the residents to close or open the living areas that all face the vertical courtyard. The facade design is another crucial element. We created it specifically to adapt to our nation's regional climate patterns. Using bamboo, a material that grows naturally all across our nation, we optimized the Venturi Effect in the façade design to effectively circulate and cool air across its levels by combining positive and negative air pressure. Furthermore, the bamboo design components serve as a sunbreaker. Our design tenet, which comes from the name of the project, is to make use of the abundance of natural resources in our country, such as sunlight, rain, and different wind speeds. Long-overlooked natural features that could raise the caliber of housing design have deprived locals of a better quality of life. We were able to incorporate these natural components into the design elements, using wind to cool the entire house, solar panels to collect energy from the sun, and copious rainfall from almost half the year for our sewage system. Given the small 52-square-meter lot size, we decided to build a hydrophonics system beneath the steps to provide a specific place to grow plants and vegetables using the light from the courtyard skylight. All things considered, this environmentally friendly design method also improves the homeowner's quality of life. Balai Ani, a 71.4-square-meter home, is essentially a model for future housing typologies that give sustainability and end-user well-being top priority. It harvests the natural environment and turns it into a resource for its occupants.