Dezeen Magazine

Selective Insulation by Davidson Rafailidis

Selective Insulation is a project by Berlin architects Davidson Rafailidis that creates insulated workspaces within a larger, cold room.

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The concept has been applied to an artist's studio in Hexham, UK, where the nineteenth-century building makes it difficult to maintain warm working conditions for much of the year.

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Rather than trying to insulate the whole building, pockets of warmth shape the workspaces, which include a desk for two people, a door and a window.

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"These three elements are positioned as structural anchors, and a connect-the-dots approach is used to create a framework for the volume," the architects explain.

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This framework is covered with two-ply bubblewrap, normally used to insulate greenhouses.

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Photographs by Steve Mayes Photography.

Here's some more information from Davidson Rafailidis

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Selective Insulation, Stephanie Davidson & Georg Rafailidis
davidsonrafailidis.net

Selective Insulation is an artists studio in Hexham UK. The enclosure is a response to the chilly working conditions in the Old School House, an artists facility. In the Fall, Winter and early Spring, the uninsulated building, a masonry construction built in 1849, requires intensive heating in order to keep it thermally comfortable. A conventional approach to improving the buildings thermal efficiency would be to line the inner side of the stone walls with a new layer of insulation.

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This approach would lose all potential thermal mass in the stone and create an equally distributed warm zone in the interior. In this project, we asked the question, can insulating a building be more strategic? Can it have formal consequences? Can it organize space?? Selective Insulation defines small areas in a building that need to be warm during the cold months of the year. The result are warm pockets within existing uninsulated spaces of a building.

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The form of the installation, which acts as a small warm room for sedentary or desk-related work, comes out of a set of parameters related to how the room is used, or the program. Required in the program of desk-related work are: 1. a desk, 2. a way to enter/exit, and 3. access to a window. These three elements are positioned as structural anchors, and a connect-the-dots approach is used to create a framework for the volume.

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The 4m2 interior is the minimum required desk-related working space for two people. Around the framework, an insulating layer of double-ply bubblewrap, commonly used to insulate greenhouses, is wrapped, sealing the space thermally. The installation is positioned within a 66m2 working space as a room-in-a-room, providing temperature-specific spaces for different activities.

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