In the wake of devastating natural disasters around the world, triggered mainly by environmental pollution, the need for buildings that truly protect people has become evident. This is why resilience is one of the pillars of Casa AVANTRA (AVANTRA house).
The RAE (Spanish acronym for Royal Spanish Academy) defines resilience as the capacity of a material, mechanism, or system to recover its initial state when the disturbance to which it had been subjected has ceased. Therefore, for a building to be considered resilient, it must be able to withstand intense natural and man-made disasters.
At Casa AVANTRA (AVANTRA House) we are committed to take the necessary actions to sustain this important attribute:
We will have ample access to ambulances and firefighters. We will have on hand a defibrillator, a first aid kit, and other supplies, such as bandages, toiletries, and a stock of non-perishable food that will last for an estimated 10 days and will take into account the maximum capacity of the house.
We will use a solar panel system, interconnected with the CFE grid, capable of producing 105% of the energy required per year. We will also have batteries to supply the house’s critical systems for 10 days in case of a blackout. We will also have an automatic lighting control and shutdown system and a thermal envelope for the house to preserve heat in winter and keep it cool in summer.
We will know in advance which points of the structure are the weakest so that after a seismic event, these parts will be the first to be monitored and/or repaired. Finally, we will make sure to have a 10-day supply of drinking water for all the inhabitants, as well as bathroom furniture that uses as little water as possible, and we will also use rainwater to reduce the consumption of drinking water.
Many of these strategies, necessary to achieve resilience, are at the same time those that have been promoted for years in the green building movement. The solutions are the same, but the motivation is life safety, rather than doing the right thing.
Casa AVANTRA (AVANTRA House) will be a green building project that will keep you safe. A powerful motivation that will help us to fully adopt measures that help the planet.