Oil Silos Transformed into Housing / Pinkcloud





An oil silo, or LPG Vessel, is a storage container for compressed liquefied petroleum gas. Oil silos are fully pressurized, waterproof, and built to meet industrial standards. There are approximately 49,000 oil silos in over 660 oil refineries worldwide!

As the human population increases at an exponential rate, oil discovery is decreasing at an exponential rate. Natural gas is becoming scarce and oil silos are now becoming abandoned as storage containers. As Earth rapidly approaches Peak Oil, non-renewable fossil fuel resources are diminishing fast. Soon humans can no longer depend on natural gas as an energy source. At this point, humans cannot use the existing 49,000 oil silos as fuel storage containers. Oil Silos will all be emptied and abandoned.

The Oil Silo Home designed by Pinkcloud recycles existing empty oil silos by transforming them into affordable housing for families worldwide. It’s a 100% self-supporting housing solution for the post-oil world. As an adaptive-reuse design, the Oil Silo Home incurs extraordinarily low costs. It’s highly structurally stable, efficient to assemble and disassemble, and has the capacity for pre-fabrication and mass production. Waste and embodied energy are dramatically reduced by the Oil Silo Home. By recycling existing abandoned silos for housing, we can revitalize former oil refineries and industrial zones into healthy, thriving communities. As a carbon-positive design, the Oil Silo Home can actually contribute energy back into the grid.

Contaminated oil silos are first detoxified with In Situ oil bioremediation. In this process, soil microbes which eat harmful pollutants clean up toxic chemicals, leaving only harmless byproducts such as CO2 gas. Existing oil silos are then retrofitted on-site. Large-scale components for the Oil Silo Home are pre-fabricated offsite. Modular assembly reduces construction cost and manufacturing time, thereby enabling consistent quality and efficient mass production of silo home components.

The Oil Silo Home is designed to generate energy while simultaneously reducing energy use. Our design comprises an integrated set of passive sustainable installations augmented by the silo’s inherent spherical shape. The Oil Silo Home exceeds a carbon-neutral classification and ultimately strives to achieve a carbon-positive rating, thereby benefitting the environment by producing more energy than it consumes. The 700 existing oil refineries have great potential for redevelopment. Refineries can actually be converted into thriving green communities which generate clean energy. Oil Silo Home communities have the capacity to effectively transform existing refineries into mega solar plants which produce clean energy.














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‘Forest Life’ / OOZE



© Artur Borejszo

OOZE architects shared with us their mixed residential and commercial project located in Gundala, 35 km south of the Hyderabad city center in India. Their aim for ‘Forest Life’ was to create an eco-community with different individual villa typologies located within the existing forest next to a much denser mixed use development with residential towers and a commercial podium with proximity shops leisure activities and offices located along the main road leavingHyderabad towards the south. More images and architects’ description after the break.


© Artur Borejszo

With a communal sport/cultural center and a temple also located amongst the Villas and the Forest, the design focuses on the integration of the existing natural landscape, the slope and the forest with the built environment. The client requirements had very strict requirements imposing rectangular plots and north south orientation following the “vastu” principles for the infrastructure and the residential units.


© Artur Borejszo

This gave birth to an interesting planning methodology combining a strict matrix grid of built structures interweaving with the natural elements of the site: Forest, water, topography. The interconnections between the different small quarters were one of the most important criteria of the urban design to insure that each unit is accessible by car, foot or cycle. Every part of the site is reachable via a network of half natural half landscaped public green spaces penetrating the built structure and creating zones for social interaction, natural screens that create spaces of privacy. Each living unit has one front access to a street and one back access to the green.


© Artur Borejszo

The typologies of the villas are based on the idea of a natural living in symbioses with nature. The garden is experienced as an extension of the living room. Patios and balconies include nature within the lived in environment. The boundaries between outside and inside are intentionally blurred. Every unit is designed following sustainable criteria’s taking in consideration life cycles and autonomous systems incorporating the aspect of water, energy, and waste at different scales: the house, the community, the neighborhood.


© Artur Borejszo

A climatic skin reinterpreting the traditional ornamental “Jali” (perforated stone or latticed screen) wraps around the living spaces. It is an evolving feature which transforms itself according to the orientation and the privacy requirements for each residential unit. Every unit is unique.

Architects: OOZE
Location: Hyderabad, India
Team: OOZE-Sylvain Hartenberg, Eva Pfannes, Shilesh and in collaboration with Urban Studio
Type: Mixed-use residential and sustainable resort
Area: 38Ha
Year: 2011
You have read this article Architecture / Featured / India / Resort / Sustainability with the title . You can bookmark this page URL https://moderndeserthomes.blogspot.com/2012/03/forest-life-ooze.html. Thanks!