Solar Decathlon Latin America and Caribbean: Comfort and the Balance between Passive and Active Design

This article contains an overall analysis of the results obtained by the four highest scoring teams in the Solar Decathlon Latin America and Caribbean 2015 collegiate sustainable habitat competition. Considering that the prototypes developed were based on energy self-su ciency when operational, it was considered necessary to propose this analysis based on the degree of suitability of each of these models based on their di erent performances from the perspective of comfort conditions. It was observed that the design of the prototypes did not manage to properly adjust the relationship between passive and active conditioning elements based on the location’s conditions. Accordingly, this article concludes that a balance of the two aforementioned conditioning modes recorded better results based on the measurements taken

Minga: sustainable and replicable urban renovation model, the Buenaventura case

Este artículo presenta los resultados obtenidos en la investigación realizada durante la ejecución de un diseño de renovación urbana sostenible en la ciudad de Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, como parte de la propuesta del equipo MINGA para el SDLAC 2019 (Solar Decathlon Latin America and Caribbean). Este proyecto fue desarrollado por un grupo de estudiantes y profesores, dentro de los espacios académicos de los programas de pregrado de Arquitectura e Ingeniería Civil de las universidades partícipes del equipo MINGA. Se utilizó la metodología de enseñanza-aprendizaje basada en proyectos, con integración curricular en cursos interdisciplinares tipo taller de proyectos. El objetivo principal fue demostrar la viabilidad de un proyecto de urbanismo resiliente, concebido para el clima futuro en una ciudad costera del trópico cálido-húmedo. Los resultados demostraron que se puede crear un urbanismo climático, resiliente al clima, que garantice la permanencia de los habitantes originales de las zonas costeras, mitigando los riesgos por inundación y garantizando el arraigo cultural de sus habitantes, aun en escenarios de aumento en el nivel del marThis article presents the results obtained in research made during a sustainable urban renewal design in the city of Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, as part of MINGA team's proposal for SDLAC 2019 (Solar Decathlon Latin America and Caribbean). This project was developed by a group of students and professors, as part of the undergraduate programs of architecture and civil engineering of the partner universities in the MINGA team. A project-based teaching-learning methodology was used, integrating the curricula in interdisciplinary project workshop-type courses. The main goal was to demonstrate the viability of a resilient urban planning project, conceived for the future climate in a coastal city in the hot-humid tropics. The results showed that a climate-resilient urbanism can be created, which guarantees the permanence of the original inhabitants of the coastal areas, mitigating flooding risks, and preserving the cultural roots of the inhabitants, even under sea-rise scenarios

Maquina Verde - El Arca Solar Decathlon Latin America & Caribbean 2019

The current supply of social housing in Latin American countries is often not adequate for the real needs of the population, generating situations of social conflict and permanent contraposition between the “formal” and the “informal” cities. The Pontificia Universidad Javeriana of Bogotá and the Politecnico di Torino participated together in the Solar Decathlon Latin America and Caribbean 2019 competition with the project Máquina Ver-de - El Arca, a vivienda social thought for the informal neighborhood of El Pozón, located in the periphery of the Colombian city of Cartagena de Indias. The project is based on the reinterpretation of the Caribbean house, starting from a study of the user needs, integrating industrial technologies - like the steel frame- and artisanal technologies -such as the tejidos in the façade-, with a strategy to reduce the environmental impact of the building in its life cycle. In December 2019 Máquina Verde - El Arca was built and tested by the students and professors of the two universities during the final phase of the Solar Decathlon in Cali, Colombia. The collaboration in the international competition was born as an innovative training activity based on PBL (Problem Based Learning) and “learning by doing” methodologies and has evolved into a shared research about the issues of environmental, social and economic sustainability for the architecture of social interest of the Latin American cities

El Solar Decathlon América Latina y el Caribe 2019: una oportunidad para el desarrollo de actividades innovadoras de capacitación y aprendizaje

The Solar Decathlon Latin America and Carribean 2019 held in Cali (Colombia), was an international competition between universities that aims to propose accessible "social housing". The participation in this edition, allowed the construction of housing prototypes interpreting the needs of the most "vulnerable" users, trying to overcome the criticality of the current Latin American scenario in which the supply of social housing does not meet the real needs of the population. The innovative teaching activity proposed by the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogotà and the Politecnico di Torino through the Project-Based Learning (PBL) methodology, played a fundamental role in this experience. The ocument presents the development of the project for this competition, from the point of view of training and education opportunities for the students and makes a proposal to improve the PBL experiences in relation to the construction of 1:1 prototypes in the architecture and engineering classes

WATER CONSUMPTION BALANCE AT DWELLING AND DISTRICT SCALE: AN INNOVATIVE PROSPECTIVE FOR CARTEGENA DE INDIAS – EL POZÓN

The consequences of climate change are affecting informal neighbourhoods, exacerbating, even more, the instability and insecurity of these settlements. For instance, the settlement of El Pozón, located in the Colombian city of Cartagena de Indias, in addition to its social and economic problems, is characterized by a contradictory environmental situation: on the one hand, it suffers the problem of floods due to its proximity to the La Virgen swamp and to seasonal heavy rainfall. On the other hand, the supply of drinking and domestic water is problematic - especially in the dry season- and reaches unsustainable costs for a population who lives in marginal conditions (Guarín Cobos, 2003). The project of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana of Bogotá and the Politecnico di Torino, presented at the Solar Decathlon Latin America & Caribbean 2019 was aimed at improving the quality of life of the El Pozón inhabitants, offering a new model of an economic and sustainable house, self-sufficient from an energy point of view and achievable largely in self-construction with local materials and dry technologies. The prototype, that was built and tested for the duration of the contest, proposed an integrated water use strategy at the building scale, which combines different low-tech systems. This article presents a possible methodology to realize a low-tech water technology: a blue-green roof module to incorporate into the design of the Solar Decathlon prototype. The main purpose is to stimulate the inhabitants to address problems such as lack of sanitation, water quality and environmental improvement, through a scalable, sustainable and cost-effective solution, using mainly waste materials

“Methodology comparative analysis” in the solar decathlon competition: a proposed housing model based on a prefabricated structural system

The construction sector, by direct or indirect actions, consumes more than 40% of the global energy produced and is responsible for 30% of CO2 emissions. It is a need of the construction industry to transform its practices and processes by proposing systems of lower demand to the environment. In this sense, closed prefabrication and industrialization as a constructive processcould be the key to seek savings and efficiency from its origin to the end of life of buildings. In this context, this article presents a methodological proposal of quantitative, qualitative and comparative analysis of the structural systems of eight prototypes presented in the “Solar Decathlon” contest in its North-American and Latin-American editions (both of them in 2015) and the European edition (in2014). This methodology deduces the characteristics of a structural system of lower environmental demand and the characteristics of these constructive processes, in favor of a new paradigm of sustainability and to be applied in innovative systems of new housing model

Diseño de un prototipo de vivienda autosostenible para zonas cálidas

Proyecto de gradoEl proyecto cubrió todos los aspectos de los diseños concurrentes de la carrera (urbano, arquitectónico y constructivo) a fin de que el producto arquitectónico cumpliera, más allá de las exigencias de un módulo habitacional para el concurso Solar Decatlón de Latinoamérica y el Caribe 2020, con las exigencias de una implantación en un contexto urbano (eco barrio), social y económico reales.AGRADECIMIENTOS INTRODUCCIÓN PROPÓSITO OBJETIVOS 1. Metodología 2. Resultados 3. Aportes, originalidad y relevancia 4. Conclusiones BIBLIOGRAFÍAPregradoArquitect

Student competitions as a learning method with a sustainable focus in higher education: the University of Seville “Aura Projects” in the “Solar Decathlon 2019”

In recent times, teaching in higher education has undergone a significant transformation. Current advances and innovative proposals in educational science research are centred around a transdisciplinary approach, the so-called integrated curriculum and the incorporation of the transversal concept of sustainability. In summary, the so-called learning processes through problem-solving. The Solar Decathlon Competition is the most prestigious international university student competition for sustainable habitat. The aim of this article is to show how the Aura Strategy, developed by the University of Seville Solar Deca thlon Team to participate in the Solar Decathlon 2019 Latin America and Europe competitions, is aligned with the aforementioned proposals. Among the results, the generation of a transforming teaching network of the departmental structures in the University of Seville is to be highlighted. These transformations in teaching lead students to new, broader and more holistic approaches to study, as well as new capabilities and skills. The question of interdisciplinarity requires new tools and research lines to achieve successful implementation in higher education, and the participation in the Solar Decathlon Competition is one of the

Health and Habitability in the Solar Decathlon University Competitions: Statistical Quantification and Real Influence on Comfort Conditions

Medicine and architecture are disciplines with the main objectives of satisfying the fundamental needs of human beings: health, comfort, well-being, safety, and ensuring an acceptable quality of life in a sustainable habitat. In both areas of knowledge, the advances and the most innovative proposals in the fields of research and teaching are focused on transversal knowledge and the use of learning methods through problem solving (learning by doing). The student competitions called “Solar Decathlon” are focused on the development of these concepts, in which prototypes of sustainable and, as far as possible, healthy social housing are tested. In these university competitions, the design of energy-efficient and comfortable living environments that contribute to the health of the occupants are encouraged; however, the methodology for evaluating the “comfort conditions” stipulated in the competition rules considers only parameters that can be monitored by sensors. For this article, the prototypes presented by the “Solar Decathlon Team of the University of Seville” to the editions of said competition held in Latin America and Europe (in 2015 and 2019, respectively) are being studied. The present research starts from the fact that the unique consideration of measurable indices (such as temperature, humidity, etc.), is clearly insufficient when it comes to evaluating the real conditions of habitability and comfort that a domestic architectural space presents. For this reason, a theoretical–practical analysis is carried out by means of surveys, with the final objective of determining a methodology for evaluating comfort—complementary to that of the competition—which assesses other relevant issues and which, in short, takes into account the repercussion on people’s health. From our analysis, we conclude that at least these two methodologies should be used to evaluate comfort because they are individually considered incomplete in terms of the data provided by each one of them. The survey-based methodology provides complementary information on comfort and health that could be taken into account in future editions of Solar Decathlon

Del prototipo a la materialización de la cubierta; proceso evolutivo para el concurso Solar Decathlon Latinoamérica y Caribe 2019. (vol. 1.2)

Universidad de Sevilla. Grado en Fundamentos de Arquitectur