Solar House Heads for Dc

Well, the main concept of the house that you see is both on the inside and outside of the house is the icon shape. We always talk about solar as being a kind of a strange looking, technological box kind of creature and we really wanted to make our solar house look like a familiar house, the home we've all grown up in. And we started with a traditional symmetrical gable and skewed it so that it would be appropriate for solar. So we have this skewed gable shape that you see both outside, like on the east porch over here, you'll also see it on the inside - there's wood trusses that kind of replicate and follow that line as well, and even on the west side you see that shape as well. So it's just repeated over and over again to remind people that we really were focused in on a new idea for solar, new shape that is familiar that reminds people of home. I think Dean Fischer and Dean Crouch have both commented that this was one of the first projects that have managed to bring together multiple departments. College of Design has had architecture school, graphic design school as well as interior design working with us. IT has had computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, we've also had the College of Continuing Education with their construction management program join us, so it's really been interdisciplinary. And it hasn't even been broken up into phases where each school takes over a certain phase in time. We've actually all designed the house together, built the house together, argued about the house together so it's been a very integrative process. Well, what we really aimed for was not just the look and feel of a house that we're familiar with, we really wanted to make this house viable for a next use. There is a lot of energy, a lot of effort, a lot of materials and resources put into it, so our team committed themselves to finding a next use for the house, whether it's a research center, an exhibit house, and as part of that we even dedicated ourselves to getting a manufactured permit. Our house may have a lot more technology than people would choose to but we consider it a prototype house with a sample of everything they would want to integrate from solar panels to great insulation, to interesting energy star appliances, we have the whole gamut.