A team of Australian students has once again made it to the list of top finalists in the global Solar Decathlon Design Challenge.
Monash Solar Decathlon Team (MSDT) is a multidisciplinary student-run team from Monash University, with the goal of developing unique and practical net-zero building designs. The designs they submit annually to the US Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon serve to provide innovative solutions to the ongoing energy crisis, inspiring a vision of a green future.
Eleven collegiate teams across the globe have spent nearly two years designing and building full-size, high-performance, low-carbon houses for the competition. The dwellings demonstrate creative solutions to real-world climate issues, as well as long-term durability for local environmental conditions.
The Australian entry, called ‘Humming Home’, is a transition house for victims of domestic violence. The design will enable occupants to become successfully self-supporting and self-sustaining during their stay at the transitional home to facilitate their reintegration into society.
The design implements various passive design principles while minimising embodied emissions, with a prefabricated construction which allows the design to be highly scalable while keeping costs and emissions down.
The Monash team hopes in the long term to create a viable design that can be easily replicated and adapted to any plot and improve the current standards of transition housing from both user experience and sustainability perspective.
The awards ceremony will be livestreamed on April 23, 10 a.m. ET.
