|
contents | events | |||||||||
| Saint-Gobain is supporting seven student projects at the Solar Decathlon Europe 2014 competition French construction materials maker Saint-Gobain is supporting seven student projects at the Solar Decathlon Europe 2014 competition which has been officially opened in Versailles by the French Housing Minister Sylvia Pinel. The aim of this international academic architectural competition is to improve education and research in the fields of sustainable architecture and solar energy. This year, 20 student teams representing 41 universities from 16 countries and three continents are presenting full-scale prototypes of the sustainable, comfortable, innovative and affordable solar energy houses they designed. The projects will be assessed according to 10 criteria: architecture, engineering & construction, energy efficiency, electrical energy balance, comfort conditions, house functioning, communications & social awareness, urban design, transportation & affordability, innovation, sustainability. The competition will be open to the public from June 28 to July 14. Saint-Gobain creates and delivers innovative and high-performance solutions that improve our habitat and daily life and is sponsoring the competition to help young and talented student teams to build and renovate comfortable, healthy, economical and energy-efficient buildings. Saint-Gobain brings support through its know-how in building physics and its innovative solutions for creating sustainable habitats. Through its different brands, it has given students from France, Germany, the United States, Denmark, Romania, India, Mexico and Spain access to its 350-year expertise providing knowledge on building materials, technical advice and general guidance. It has also given financial support and building materials. The following student teams received sponsorship from Saint-Gobain: France The Atlantic Challenge team comprising about 100 students from schools in Nantes, including Ecole Centrale de Nantes, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Nantes and Ecole Supérieure du Bois, is presenting a project called Philéas. This project consists of renovating CAP 44, an abandoned industrial building from 1895 situated in the Nantes area, by inserting prefab wooden modules in the existing structure. The idea is to transform the building into a multiple use building with housing, offices, a nursery, a restaurant and a farming activity on the roof. USA-Germany The German-American team Inside Out with 50 student s from the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University (United States) and 12 students from University of Applied Sciences (Erfurt) Germany, is competing with its 75 m² Techstyle House which is completely powered by the sun. The house consists of a lightweight steel structure supporting a pre- stressed architectural membrane insulated by several flexible layers to create a "textile" house meeting the PassivHaus standard, the highest international standard for energy efficiency. It is the first time that a Solar Decathlon team has built a house with an enclosure entirely made of textiles which allow for a modular design and adaptive spaces that can answer increasingly diverse needs of the modern family. India The Indian team Shunya representing 70 students from the Indian Institute of Technology of Bombay and the Academy of Architecture of Mumbai are presenting their H Naught project. The students' aim was to design and build an afford able and sustainable zero-energy solar powered house with fast prefabrication and a modular indoor-space to meet the exponentially increasing demand for urban housing and energy in India. At the same time, they wanted to combine modern science with the heritage of India by incorporating essential elements of VastuShastra, the ancient Indian science of buildings and construction. The result is a 4-storey building module designed for a traditional Indian family (grandparents, parents and children). Denmark The Danish team DTU with about 60 students from the Technical University of Denmark conceived a project named Embrace. It consists of a dwelling where the building envelope is split into two different parts, a thermal envelope and a weather shield. Between the two parts, the team created a new kind of space which could be described as an indoor garden. Thanks to a passive strategy, the weather shield will dramatically improve the local climate around the thermal envelope. This project is meant to integrate the increasingly dense city of Copenhagen and is aimed at saving resources, energy, space and money. It is perfectly adapted to Denmark’s severe winters with sharp wind and bitter cold. Romania The Romanian team EFdeN consisting of 70 students from three top Technical Universities in Bucharest - the “Ion Mincu” University of Archit ecture and Urbanism, the Technical University of Civil Engineering and the University Politehnica Bucharest - is presenting a project called EFdeN. The idea of this project was to reintegrate nature into an urban environment. They designed and built a one-family house which is ideal for urban areas and the rehabilitation of former industrial zones, well connected to the urban network and includes a green house. Mexico The Mexican team UNAM comprises 78 students from the following UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) entities: the School of Engineering and the School of Architecture, the Research Center of Industrial Design, the National School of Plastic Art and the School of Social and Political Science. They ar e competing with a project called CASA, conceived for the Metropolitan Area of Mexico’s Val ley, the third most populated metropolitan area in the world. Focusing on issues like water management, pollution and the acute risk of poverty, the students’ aim was to design a sustainable housing proposal to face urban sprawl and adapt to environmental changes. The envelope is made of several different layers. Spain The Plateau Team from Spain with 27 students from University of Alcala de Henares and University of Castilla La Mancha is presenting a project called SymbCity. The idea of this project is to take advantage of unused space on buildings - roofs, terraces and other elevated urban areas -to optimize the urban infrastructure and create a real symbiosis between existing buildings and the constructions added on their roofs. write your comments about the article :: © 2014 Construction News :: home page |