Students prepare the model presented at the opening of the design studio. (Photo: Florian Heinzelmann)
Students designing a floating, energy-producing home for the Solar Decathlon competition have opened their design studio in the Science Centre’s bare basement.
In the United States, basements and garages have proven to be fertile breeding grounds for creativity. Violins, fireworks, music and the first Apple computers have emerged from such humble beginnings. Fittingly, the Science Centre basement now houses the Solar Decathlon team’s design studio. Still very much a bare space, the studio was opened on 28 April by the dean of the Architecture faculty, Karin Laglas, and project director, Professor Patrick Teuffel.
The team’s mission is to design and build a two-person home (smaller than 100 square meters) that is energetically self-sufficient but grid-connected, while using only solar energy and the best available technologies to reduce energy demand.
The ‘Revolt’ house proposed by the Delft team is a typically Dutch design in that it floats. “Essentially, it’s a floating Passivhaus,” says project manager and architect, Florian
Heinzelmann, using the original German word for a house without heating. The current drawings show three interconnected spaces for sleeping, dining and living situated around a central pillar. Different sections of the house offer a range of facades, varying from a totally closed to an open house front. By rotating the house, the designers make clever use of the sun’s radiation. The well-insulated house thus profits from the warmth of the intermittent winter sun, while also avoiding excess heat in the summer months. Solar panels and solar collectors on the roof provide the home with heat and power.
Tim Hilhorst, an architecture student, and project manager, Heinzelmann, aim to finish the design this summer. Next year team members will build the prototype, which will then be transported to Madrid for the final exhibition in September 2012. During the event, the 20 university entries will be rated according to ten different aspects (hence the ‘deca’ in the name), such as architecture, energy efficiency, comfort conditions, industrialisation & market viability, and innovation.
Some 30 students are now participating in the project (19 architecture students, 10 MSc students in Sustainable Energy Technology, and three Technology, Policy & Management students), alongside the students from Erasmus University who will advise in financing the project and attracting sponsors. More students are welcome.
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