Solar Decathlon 2012
PlayArquitectura visited the 2nd Building of the Solar Decathlon Europe competition.
Solar Decathlon Europe is an international university competition that promotes research into the development of efficient housing. The objective of the participating teams is to design and build houses that consume the least amount of natural resources and produce a minimum amount of waste during their life cycle. Special emphasis is placed on reducing energy consumption and obtaining all the energy needed from the sun.
During the final phase of the competition each team has to set up their house in Madrid, in an area open to the public that we call Solar Villa, where all of them can be visited, while they face the ten tests (hence the name “decathlon”) that determine the winner of the edition. In September 2012, the competition had 18 proposals from 12 different countries, 8 of them European (Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Romania), in addition to four others from China, Japan, Brazil and Egypt.
Each of these teams is supported by one or more universities, with the financial and technical collaboration of institutions and companies. The main role throughout the process, from the beginning of the design to the last phase of the competition in Madrid, falls on the students, known as “decathletes”, supervised by a professor, the “Faculty Advisor”.
