Alexander Jack

I can imagine the conversation in the 60’s went something like this:

Architect: Here’s our proposal for your new U.S. Navy facility.
U.S. Navy: ummm..it looks kinda like a… *pointing to the plan view
Architect: Yea..we know, but the arrangement works much better programmatically and you said you wanted ‘Corbusier.
U.S. Navy: yea but…
Architect: Don’t worry, it’s only noticeable from the air…and who ever will see it

(Enter Google Earth)

Naval Amphibious Base (NAB), Coronado, San Diego, CA

The 2007 Solar Decathlon (website) was held in Washington, D.C. this week.  Since I live a stones throw away, I spent a Saturday standing in line waiting to get into the houses and absorbing the solar in the form of a sunburn.  I expected to see a fair amount of undercooked "solar shacks" but I was surprised with many great 800 sqft. homes under 1 million dollars (yes you read that right.)  The schools in participation were from the U.S., Canada, Spain, Germany, and Puerto Rico. The students representing the schools are architects, engineers, visual artists, and construction managers.  

The solar homes had to operate like an average American home: 3/4 of a day of artificial lighting, 5 hrs of T.V.(nice), cool refrigerator, and power a little golf-cart-sized car.  There was 10 objective/subjectives in total: architecture, engineering, market viability, communications, comfort zones, appliances, hot water, lighting, energy balance, and getting around.   Although I have favorites of the homes, I will refrain from voicing it here because of I was only able to get into a handful of the units. However, here are a few things I liked.

Technische Universitat Darmstadt was not the most impressive at first for me, but once I encircled the unit it occurred to me the entire fenestration was operable sun-tracing solar louvers (wow, expensive).  Also, the interior walls are only an inch or two think due to a new system of paraffin wax filled walls.  Without getting into too many details of how this enthalpy system works, the wax alters states to a liquid when hit with the sun and releases this stored energy during the night when it cools and hardens.

Texas A&M had the best interior space I have been in a while.  Their home expanded well beyond the solar objective.  The students developed a system of addition and plug-in groWalls to outfit the structure with bathrooms, kitchens,etc.  Their kit-of-parts home could be built by two people and a forklift.  In all, the home was well thought out and detailed. 

University of Cincinnati had the largest solar thermal array ever.  I had that capability of heating the water to 190 deg. more than adequate to heat/cool the home and take a lot of showers. 

By the end, I was solar’d out.  If your wondering how the schools afforded these 1/2 million dollar homes and shipping, it goes like this:  they were given 100K and the rest could come from anywhere, mostly donations I believe.  I’m confident when I say, it is the epicenter for energy-geeks this week in D.C.

Slide Show of All Photos…