Innovation from fresh minds is encouraged and spurred when colleges and universities compete in the most challenging solar home design competition in the world, the Solar Decathlon. Spanning over two years of work, architecture and engineering schools pooled their best and brightest to build efficient solar houses. Here’s a subjective “Best of” from the...
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The City College of New York contributed an innovative way to utilize the underrated, yet valuable space of NYC’s roof tops for its 2011 Solar Decathlon entry. The sleek, modular building was named the Solar Roof Pod. The roof mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) panels supply the house with energy while it also shades...
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Teaming up to create an admirable civic effort, the Parsons New School for Design and the Stevens Institute of Technology built a home called the emPowerHouse for the 2011 Solar Decathlon. It is destined to be in the neighborhood of Greater Deanwood, outside of Washington D.C. The home was also built in partnership with...
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The Solar Decathlon team from Ohio State created a home called enCORE. I was interested as to how this house would turn out, as the original model had a roofline that funneled the rain water into the middle of the house to be filtered and reused. This home, however, changed dramatically from its...
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Originating from the sunny, warm, humid climate of Florida, four schools representing the University of South Florida, Florida State University, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Florida combined their efforts to create a lofty, spacious entry into the 2011 Solar Decathlon called the Flex House. (As of the time of writing,...
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Ghent University presented an innovative idea to create a home that could be easily transported and assembled by a homeowner for the 2011 Solar Decathlon. They utilized simple design and called it the E-Cube. The E-Cube was the first Solar Decathlon entry from the Belgian university. They had the goal to create...
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One of the most poetic entries in the 2011 Solar Decathlon, Florida International University created the perFORMance House. It also won 1st place in the Energy Balance category, producing as much or more energy than it needs. It’s a house that would work in in any temperate, tropical area, not necessarily one that solely...
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Old Dominion University and Hampton University joined forces to build a Solar Decathlon house called Unit 6 for the 2011 competition. Their goal was to create a solar net-zero energy house that would contribute to the formation of walkable city neighborhoods. Team Tidewater created a modular home made from four main sections and featured...
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One of the most creative entries into the 2011 Solar Decathlon was the collaborative brainchild from the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the California Institute of Technology. They impressed Solar Decathlon visitors with an affordable, efficient, practical and futuristic CHIP house. The name CHIP is the shortened version of Compact Hyper-Insulated Prototype. Working...
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The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign built the Re_Home for the 2011 Solar Decathlon. The idea behind the home is that it can be trucked into a disaster area to provide rapid housing for families without a home due to fire, tornado, flooding or other natural disaster. The roof hosts 24 monocrystalline photovoltaic...
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