Princeton University student Georgian Baronian is examining how large-scale structures can benefit from using water on the roof as a thermal insulator and solar reflector. She was presented with her Global LafargeHolcim Awards Ideas prize by Roland Köhler, Chairman of the Board of the LafargeHolcim Foundation and Maria Atkinson, founding CEO of the Green Building Council of Australia, and member of the Board of the LafargeHolcim Foundation.

Georgina Baronian, Princeton University, School of Architecture, Princeton, NJ, USA

I have been developing a full-scale mock-up of the evaporative roof prototype, installed at the Princeton University School of Architecture in May 2018. The mock-up takes the form of a circular pavilion 23ft in diameter (approx. 7m) and will be exhibited on campus for one month at the end of the academic year.

The intention of the mock-up is, first of all, to further pursue a study of indirect evaporative cooling as a technology that can be enabled through both formal and technical development. To this end, the mock-up will explore the aesthetic implications of the design while at the same time testing the evaporative cooling potential of the prototype with both of these objectives challenged to operate in real-life environmental conditions. Sensors will be installed and thermal comfort surveys are to be undertaken to study the radiative heat transfer of the installation in ambient conditions.

Furthermore the pavilion installation aims to push the notion of how we understand the enclosure as it relates to the thermal performance of a building. The pavilion itself is entirely unclosed, consisting only of an elevated roof – the air underneath the roof will be same temperature as its outdoor surroundings, yet cooling is possible through the principle of radiative heat exchange between the human body and a (cool) surface, demonstrating a new paradigm through which to understand the production of thermal conditioning and proposing a building-without-walls model for generating ‘interior’ climate.

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The lightweight membrane roof cooled by water is an exciting new idea for the pervasive phenomenon of the big box warehouse. As the design is developed, a number of pragmatic concerns will need to be addressed before this can be considered a viable scheme: is the water sourcing sustainable, how is silt managed, what could a correlate be in regions with water scarcity?

Sustainability has become a core principle of architecture and construction in North America. Winners of the Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction presented in Chicago show how the leading edge of sustainable design means reaching far beyond “common sense”. Their approaches use proven instruments that are cleverly applied to improve the quality of life. So the world builds better.

Taking on the challenges of logistics centers at the periphery of cities as a point of the departure, the project unfolds as a research undertaking investigating the question of how to cool large structures with minimal means. With the objective in mind to reduce the building’s energy load, (particularly the deployment of non-renewable resources), a thin layer of water is introduced as an additional roof layer – acting as a solar reflector, while providing thermal insulation. Whereas technical considerations are at the core of the project, the study culminates in a design of a big box structure that is as reduced in its formal manifestation as it is beautiful in its aesthetic simplicity.