From the international competition Solar Decathlon Europe, which had its final round in Wuppertal, Germany, the CTU team brought a third and a fifth place. The theme of this year’s competition was sustainable building and living in urban areas. A team of students led by teachers from the Faculty of Civil Engineering of CTU and with technical support from the University Centre for Energy Efficient Buildings decided to design and then construct a modular unit for the extension of student halls of residence.
The design of the wood-based superstructure emphasized prefabrication, low energy consumption, applicability to other, typologically similar buildings, all according to the principles of sustainable construction.
After two years of preparation and completion of the partial tasks of the competition, when the design documentation was prepared refurbishment and extension models of the rebuilding of the building and the competition object were prepared, and the verification construction of the competition object on the experimental area of UCEEB and its subsequent dismantling took place, the object was transported in trucks to Wuppertal, Germany. Here, it was reassembled, assembled, commissioned, and handed over for measurement of selected properties and evaluation by the expert juries during a very intensive two weeks by the competition team. The students and their teachers then spent the next month here, competing and conducting tours during the public exhibition.
We talked about how challenging the preparation and subsequent implementation of the project was and what will happen to the building next with experts from the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague – Prof. Jan Tywoniak, who led the whole project, and Ing. Zdenko Malík, who participated in the project as the head of the student team.