How do you design an attractive, effective, and energy-efficiency solar-powered house? Victor Olgyay, director of Rocky Mountain Institute's building practices, offers some tips.
Great architecture has never been about winning; inspiration is a fickle flame, and does not necessarily rise from the competition around you. Architects pour their souls into their art, and are more interested in a conversation about ideas than a medal. I’ve had my doubts that competition is a good way to generate wonderful designs, but frankly the 2013 Solar Decathlon, in which I was fortunate enough to be a juror, has generated some wonderful designs and important conversations.]
The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is an international
competition that challenges 20 collegiate teams to design, build, and
operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient
solar-powered house. The winner of the competition is the team that best
blends affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence with
optimal energy production.
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So what makes a winning entry? My opinion is it remains the elusive
embodiment of good design; creating a single elegant solution from a big
bag of conflicting requirements. Let me tell you what I look for.
1. A strong concept well executed
Architecture
is a language, and you’d better have something to say. This year the
Southern California Institute of Architecture’s (Sci-Arc) entry had an
innovative idea: a house in two pieces, that could move apart or
together depending on the weather. Like it or hate it, it’s hard not to
argue that it is a coherent concept. Missouri ‘s entry was a formal
response to the urgent need for disaster shelter. Austria’s entry
dematerialized the north and south walls to seamlessly blend interior
and exterior space. All of these ideas supported the design solutions.
Other
concepts, like emphasizing the mechanical room, just didn’t move me. In
my opinion, a mediocre concept, even if well executed, is still a wrong
turn.
2. Intriguing architecture
Is it interesting?
Good architecture captures the imagination. Solid forms can be used to
reference something familiar in a new way. The Czech Republic ‘s entry
this year was a box within a lattice frame, which played with light and
shadow, framed views, and alternately hid and revealed the architecture
as a person moved through it. Clever and intriguing.
However, the
quest to be interesting is not license to do anything you please. The
intrigue needs to be appropriate and enlightening—we rarely learn from
random acts of architecture. The creativity in details was rampant at
the Decathlon, from heat recovery off the clothes dryers at the Santa
Clara house to gesture-based light switches in the Stanford house. And
occasionally there were moments like the central skylight in the
University of Southern California house—a truly sublime revelation
welcoming the sky like a James Turrell skyspace.
3. Comfort
Does
it feel good? I’ll admit—I’m a humanist. I get mad at architecture that
fits me like a corset, or pokes me in the eye. I like buildings that
are comfortable to be in, that adjust to me. Give me a building that
frames a view, leads me down a path, lets me relax, compresses and
expands space. Buildings must do more than house their intended use;
they can support our lives, encourage our aspirations. Anything less is,
well, less.
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4. Wholeness
When
design is really carefully considered, the result feels complete. Not a
hodgepodge of ideas held together with sticky tape and glue, but an
integrated composition where everything supports the concept, and
nothing is superfluous. Being simple and editing out the unnecessary
brings discipline and elegance to building. The Norwich Vermont house
did this very well. Its concept of affordability was supported by
adhering to the rigorous high-performance “passive house” design
standards, which in turn allowed the designers to essentially design out
significant mechanical systems, increasing its affordability. Nice.
5. Regionalism
And
finally, the world deserves regionalism. The days of imagining that the
same house should be built the same in different climates are over.
Celebrate Seattle! Enjoy New England! Buildings that do not embrace the
genius of place are stealing a bit of our souls. Being alive includes
being aware of our environment, and actively engaging with it.
The
Decathlon is a challenge in this category, in that many of the
buildings were intended for very different climates (such as Alberta,
Canada, or the deserts of Las Vegas) but also had to perform at the
Irvine, California, competition site. The most clever solution to this
conundrum was the “bi-regional” Czech house, which performed well in the
warm California climate with a small shaded window on the south, but
would be rotated 180 degrees when located in a cold Czech climate—its
open courtyard would then capture the sun and passively warm the
building.
High-performance doesn’t mean funky architecture
You
may have noticed a conspicuous absence of “solar architecture” in this
essay. All 19 entries (one entrant withdrew months before the event),
from West Virginia’s log cabin to Alberta’s crystalline white forms
performed as net-zero energy buildings. There is no reason for a
high-performing building to look like “solar architecture” anymore. We
can—must—have performance and wonderful architecture integrated as a
seamless whole.
It goes without saying that this takes a colossal
amount of effort to produce. The practice of architecture is a slog, and
adding the complexities of the Decathlon is even more onerous. It is
clear, as Richard King of the DOE stated, “The 2013 buildings are the
best contestants yet.” The entrants this year have learned from the
previous generation of entrants, and even more importantly, have
themselves become the new generation of leaders to bring beautiful
affordable net-zero buildings to the marketplace. The contest is
improving our design conversation. Through our understanding of how to
design with climate, we have generated a responsible architecture for reducing our impact on the earth’s climate.
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