It sought to seek alternatives to answer contemporary concerns on sustainability, flexibility and adaptation of architecture to present and future challenges. It is not about forging concepts for a theoretical future; on the contrary, the objective is to break the cliché of a house that never becomes reality and to propose concrete evolving schemes. Existing technologies and behavioral patterns guided the project and the engagement in bringing collective consciousness for problems requiring alternative social behaviors.

The first step was listening to people through workshops and a crowdsourcing platform, where individuals from different horizons expressed their opinions. Common folk and specialists spoke out and 6 archetypes of personalities where created as a base for inhabiting the house. Our project team used the results of this collective survey as a start for the architecture project.

The plot is located in Niteroi, in front of Guanabara Bay, opposite to Rio’s downtown. It is along Oscar Niemeyer pathway, where several iconic buildings establish a cultural and touristic walk that structures the relation of the city with the sea. In the middle of an abandoned park, N.O.V.A. house is part of a larger context of urban renewal and establishes strong urban relations, transiting for completely public spaces in the park to private modules within the house itself. The objective is to create a laboratory that engages the community in interacting, assimilating and disseminating new ways of living.

The idea of mutualism permeates all the project’s decisions, generating active relations between the house and its context. The space is attended by members of the community and sportsmen that use different courts. Kinetic energy generators will create electricity through physical activities, exemplifying the positive relation between the house and the park, where both produce energy instead of consuming it.