The odyssey of 2121 counters the static, stable and endlessly resourceful image of the Swiss psychological and physical landscape with its towering Alps and picturesque views. With at least nine-tenths less glaciers until then, a drought-ridden climate with a strong increase in natural hazards will be the new reality. The fast pace of soaring temperatures and the creeping phenomenon of persistent scarcities in rainfall are rapidly altering the territory of the Upper Rhone Valley which is already one of the driest inner-alpine valleys. Between tropical heat and early frost, heatwaves and extreme temperatures will alter the odyssey of 2121.
In Switzerland, the city heating up the fastest is Sion and the temperatures can be expected to rise 6 degrees more until 2121. Seasonal nomadism, from the summer to the winter pastures, is inherent to the cultural heritage of this region and seeks optimum conditions and resources for both humans and live- stock. This transhumance is a cyclical return of the seasons as rites. Movement and migration across the lands has marked the canton that keeps the memory of millions of footprints and hoof-marks.
Demographic expansion not having the reducing curb of water availability, tropical nights and frost days have energetically needs that continue ascending, exponentially. Dwindling resources do not allow the masses to tread through the lands, but calls for alternative solutions for living together in a transhumance of the second modernity, a thermic transhumance. The altitudinal traditional transhumance shifts horizontally and changes scale, a domestic transhumance is propose, thus calling for a multiplicity of spaces and conditions, within which the inhabitant navigates and weaves his or her existence.
The project for a student housing lies in Sion, between a limestone hill geomorphological shaped by the glacier and the vast fields and orchards of the valley. The project implants itself geographically and conceptually between the Cantonal Agricultural School and the productive domain of Châteauneuf punctuated by greenhouses and orchards. The project creates a cohabitation between living and cultivating, by giving programmatic space depending on the seasonal necessity. The cultivation of citric fruit rotates well with the intensity and amplitude of the student’s lives where these fruit thrive in the microclimatic niches in summer and hibernate in the North in winter. The social potential of cultivating becomes an inherent part of the domestic lives and schedules of the students in a place dedicated to production, research and learning.
The student housing project has a rigid northern side punctuated by four evaporative wind-catchers and a playful southern exposed sinuous brick wall and polycarbonate greenhouse façade. The dwellings are arranged along a central backbone, situated between both the northern and southern façades. The building is passively heated in winter and cooled in summer in relation to the climate. It weaves in between two spaces, one cold, the other warm, thus creating climatic variation. Each bedroom is double orientated and the central rotating gauge allows each individual to calibrate the temperature of their room. The unit allows a flexible system of 108 dwellings.
On one side, the consideration of the flows of wind and people engages the architecture to aliment itself from low tech passive cooling systems where mechanical cooling and ventilation are not needed. As cooling degree days are expected to double by 2050, the need for cooling will sky-rocket and therefore demands of comfort will evolve not corresponding to the resources at hand. Evaporative wind-catchers cool the building through atmospheric properties where warm air rises and decreases the air pressure with a room so that cooler air falls, thus creating sufficient airflow. On the other side, solar radiation and thermic mass allow heating. The thick sinuous brick wall, also traditionally called a crinkle crackle wall, creates particular microclimates in concave niches. Massive fruit walls that used only renewable energy are the ancestors of energy-intensive greenhouses which only appeared in the 19th century.
The living and collective spaces vary seasonally and all rooms give directly onto both sides. Georges Perec dreamt of having his living room in the latin quarter, his study near the Champs-Elysées, his bedroom in Montmartre and his bathroom on the Île de la Cité. Perec’s dream faced with the 2121 Odyssey, projects a dwelling with a living room in the latin quarter in summer and in Montmartre in winter. The migrations within the bedrooms and through the living spaces, embody this multiplicity in a thermic transhumance seeing seasonal movement and interweaving the different uses, spaces and stories.
