Fab Lab House Wins Big in Spain

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The Solar Decathlon is an international competition where the US Department of Energy challenges 20 collegiate design teams to come up with the most innovative, sustainable architectural structure to help encourage and foster sustainable development. The summer of 2010 saw the construction of the Fab Lab House in Barcelona, Spain by a group of students from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC). The Fab Lab House ended up winning the 2011 Solar Decathlon, making a huge leap for affordable green and solar powered sustainable living.

Of the 20 schools that competed, only two were from the US- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and the University of Florida, an oddity considering the US Department of Energy created and sponsors the competition. You would think in an effort to foster sustainable development and generate new ideas, innovations, and technologies, the US government entity would like to have more American team competing, but this just goes to show how far we are behind the world when it comes to sustainable development. Albeit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Bits and Atoms contributed to IaaC’s design, so there’s at least some semblance of domestic intelligence.

The Fab Lab House is said to be built for a family of four, but it clearly was not designed by Americans, because that family of four is supposed to live in 750 square feet of space. But the “parametic” structure of the home allows for some serious adaptability and energy efficiency, with a rooftop covered in flexible photovoltaic cells that alter shape along with the roof itself. This type of organic development is key to what needs to be produced in future homes. The director of IaaC, Vincent Guallart, makes this very clear: “The form of the house responds to its energy production potential. While in the 20th century form followed function, in the 21st form will follow energy. Buildings must be like trees, which are self-sufficient, and must follow natural principles”.

The 2012 Solar Decathlon features 15 US teams, including individual schools like Appalachian State University and Middlebury College, and state and international teams like Team Florida, which features four major florida universities, and Team China, showcasing just one talented school from across the Pacific. We can only hope that the diversity of schools increases as the competition goes on, finding the right balance between international talent and domestic support.