Veneer House experience

Novara, Carola
Graduated from the PoliTo with a thesis at the Keio University of Tokyo. She worked for three years in the field of environmental disaster in the PoliTo Disaster Recovery Team as well as in Keio's Kobayashi Lab. She founded the non profit H.E.L.P. 6.5 with her former supervisor. Their first building, Accupoli was built in central Italy in 2018.

This work presents various aspects of the Veneer House project and the experience I lived while working in the Kobayashi Laboratory, building one of them in Nepal. When I joined the project the Veneer House Model was being adapted to be a house suitable for Nepal environment. Along with other students, I helped organise the construction field, the working schedule, the trip to the site, the accommodation, and to negotiate with Nepalese contractors and with local sellers of building supplies. In this kind of environment I confronted with an innovative project intended to help people to recover after dramatic events as a tsunami or earthquakes. My experience is described in the first chapter, along with every phase of the construction. The second chapter presents the prefabrication as a valuable approach for wood construction and notable examples, together with the description of the previous Veneer Houses. The third chapter examines the critical points of using timber and plywood in construction and its properties as a sustainable material within the frame of architecture for recovery, keeping an eye on safety aspects especially regarding as VOC and varnishing process.