Solar Decathalon 2002: Trojan Goat

Trojan Goat - by Pakesh Patel

From 2000 to 2002, architecture and engineering students at the University of Virgina worked on the first Solar Decathlon held on the National Mall in Washington D.C. sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Fourteen team designed and built homes powered entirely by the sun. The house won 1st place for architecture (by judges that included Glenn Murcutt) and 2nd place overall. The team also tied for 1st Place in the Energy Balance category, and received several other awards.

The solar-powered house uses renewable energy systems, and integrates building materials that maximize energy efficiency, while minimizing environmental impact. A moveable facade can be adjusted to change the home's insulating values depending on the weather. The solar roof array powers the home and stores excess electricity in a battery array for use at night. Once the batteries are fully charged, excess power supplies the grid.  The 750 square-foot home includes a living room, dining area, kitchenette, home office space, bathroom, bedroom and sunspace. The award-winning solar home was donated to the Piedmont Housing Alliance (PHA), a Charlottesville non-profit housing organization. The PHA sold the home to raise funds for their low-income housing programs.

Trojan Goat: Living Space - by Pakesh Patel

Assistant Professor John Quale of the School of Architecture and Professor Paxton Marshall of the School of Engineering and Applied Science advised the UVA Solar Decathlon team over the course of the two-year project. Former engineering research scientist Dan Pearce also advised the group. After the Solar Decathalon, John Quale initiated and serves as Director of the ecoMOD / ecoREMOD project, an interdisciplinary effort to design, build and evaluate prefabricated and renovated housing units for affordable housing organizations.

Trojan Goat: Bedroom - by Pakesh Patel

Sources

John Quale - Director of the Graduate Architecture Program at UVA - Click through for info on the Trojan Goat
ecoMOD Trojan Horse Project Site
UVA Donates the "Trojan Goat" Solar House to the PHA

BIQ House

BIQ House Rendering - src

Hamburg, Germany - The 15 unit Bio intelligent Quotient (BIQ) House, part of the 2013 International Building Exhibition, was built to test the world's first "bio-adaptive" facade, which uses micro-algae to shade the building as well as generate energy, designed by Arup, SSC Strategic Science Consultants and Splitterwerk Architects. As the world's first building powered by algae, the facade's bioreactors use photosynthesis to grow the algae, which is then harvested and converted to biomass for energy generation. This process for generating sustainable, renewable energy creates a shimmering, dynamic green facade for the building. The micro-algae, about the size of bacteria, are generated in reactor panels that are supplied with nutrients and carbon dioxide in order to grow. These panels are the secondary skin of the building envelope covering 2,150 square feet of the southeast and southwest facades.

Algae Bioreactor Modules getting Carbon Dioxide - src

The BIQ house has a holistic approach to its energy concept. It captures all the energy needed to generate its electricity and heat from the sun, leaving fossil fuels untouched. The facade includes 129 bioreactors, which help to insulate the building and keep out noise. The height of the algae can be changed to help with daylighting or provide shading from direct sun. Each reactor is controlled by an energy management center which harvests the algae and solar thermal heat as well as turns the reactors towards the sun. Excess heat from the sun, unused by the algae, is either used directly for solar hot water or stored in tanks under the building for later use. When the algae hits a certain rate of growth, some of the algae is harvested and taken into the building for processing, where the biomass is converted into biogas which can be burned to provide heat in the winter and electricity. The carbon dioxide from burning the biogas is then used to feed the algae.

Jan Wurm, Arup’s Europe Research Leader, said: ‘Using bio-chemical processes in the facade of a building to create shade and energy is a really innovative concept.
‘It might well become a sustainable solution for energy production in urban areas, so it is great to see it being tested in a real-life scenario.’

The news comes after Arup announced their vision for the future of skyscrapers which suggested that buildings would be ‘living’ buildings powered by algae that respond automatically to the weather and the changing needs of inhabitants.

Bioreactors - src

Videos

Sources

IBA Hamburg
Micro-Algae Tested for Green Building Facade

P.F.1 (Public Farm 1) by WORK Architecture Company

Designers: Amale Andraos, Dan Wood

P.F.1 - © Elizabeth Felicella

Public Farm One, by WORK Architecture Company, was the winner of the Young Architects Program, run by the New York Museum of Modern Art and the PS1 Contempoary Art Center, to design a temporary installation in the courtyards of PS1 in Queens, NY in 2008. This temporary installation was a shift from the previous 40 years concept of the Urban Beach into a new leisure revolution, one that created a new symbol of liberation, knowledge, power and fun for the city. The Urban Farm became the symbol for their "generations' preoccupations and hopes for a better and different future." Since cities have become accepted as having superior benefits to the suburbs, including quality of life and environmental impacts, they now have become the place of experimentation. Public Farm 1 (P.F.1) "is an architectural and urban manifesto to engage play and reinvent our cities, and our world, once again." 

by WORKac

Structure

With the desire to embrace the city's grid as an organizing patter, WORKac created a daisy pattern of six tubes arranged in a hexagon around a seventh tube. This central tube alternates between a structural column or a "picking hole" to access and harvest the crops above. Since this was a temporary installation, they decided to work with cardboard tubes which would be recyclable and biodegradable as the primary building material. Wood blocking and bolts were added to each tube for additional strength and for attaching them together.

by WORKac

Plantings

WORKac selected 51 varieties of herbs, fruit and vegetables to thrive in the urban environment and planted to bloom in succession throughout the summer. The plants are also organized by the “daisy pattern,” each daisy planted with a single species.

Plant Diagram - by WORKac

Plant Diagram - by WORKac

Irrigation and Power

Rainwater was collected into a cistern from the roof of PS1 which collected over 6,000 gallons of rainwater over the course of the exhibit. The plants were irrigated by a extemely efficient drip irrigation system. P.F.1 was designed to be completely off-grid. An array of eighteen photovoltaic modules was sized to power all of the pavilion's loads - videos screens, speakers, lights, cell phone chargers and all of the irrigation pumps.

Systems Diagram - by WORKac

Pavilion Programming

Each column is programmed to create a variety of experiences and interactions beneath the farm. These include a solar-powered juicer for fresh veggie cocktails, a periscope to provide close-up views of the fields, a towel column and a water-spouting column next to the pool, two columns joined together with a bench and enclosed by a curtain to provide privacy, a nighttime column of twinkling stars and cricket sounds and a solar-powered phone-charging column. In the smaller courtyard a series of experiential columns use video and sound to bring animal life to P.F.1 simulating the farm experience in this urban environment.

Ground Program - by WORKac

P.F.1 - by WORKac

Video

The following video shows the creation of Public Farm 1, including construction issues, how it was created and the methods they used to make this fascinating concept a reality.


Public Farm 1 - Sur les Pavés la Ferme from WORKac on Vimeo.

Sources

WORK Architecture Company
MoMA Public Farm Exhibit Webstite