Folded Wooden Responsive Houses in hot arid climate in Atacama Desert (Chile)

The typical architecture of countries in a hot arid climate is a valuable source of principles that today we call bioclimatic and sustainable. These ancient people knew very well how to avoid the harshness of the desert climate and their knowledge hailed from centuries of experience and attempts. Among these principles we can remember the typical narrow winding alleys of the city, the courtyard house, both designed to allow ventilation, producing shadow areas during hot hours of the day, and even the domes, full of advantages from an energy point of view compared to a flat cover, furthermore the big thermal mass of the walls and finally wind towers, whose purpose is to capture the winds to bring them indoors. It was decided to combine this knowledge with modern computer techniques trying to parameterize these aspects in order to optimize and make them as effective as possible, allowing in this way to add something to what has been handed down. The project was born from a practical need, create new settlements in places far from civilization, and so isolated, but at the same time close to important human activities, as could be a mining activity in the Atacama Desert. Therefore the first aim of the project is to design self-sufficient houses, able to create a comfortable environment in this extreme climate, using the desert sustainable principles. The second aim is to use the concept of folding architecture to build the village as soon as possible. To reproduce the traditional urban fabric of desert city, characterized not by planning but by spontaneous and natural increasing, we used the idea of cellular automata, which allows us to recreate this unpredictability and irregularity. From an energy point of view, the patio, which attends in every house, have a crucial role to enhance the inner environment, because during the day, producing shade, it supports the refreshing convection. Starting from a zero organism, through generative algorithms made in Rhino/Grasshopper, this effect is optimized by maximizing the area of the shadow produced by the roof inside the patio, during the hottest hours. By classifying the various organisms obtained, through structural and energy parameters, it has come out a ranking open to various solutions