We won!

In a monumental upset, our rag tag liberal arts team took first place in the Race to Zero Elementary Design competition! Our team was up against graduate institutions with dedicated engineering and architecture programs, not to mention other schools that had spent over a year on their design. In the end, our team’s attention to detail and focus on how the building serves its people made us stand out. We are honored to have received formal recognition from the Department of Energy, and could not be happier with our experience at the competition overall!

The past few days have been an inspiration, as we met and befriended other teams from across the world. It is uplifting to see so many young professionals passionate about redesigning our world’s buildings for a sustainable future. Many other school designs were extremely impressive, and had their own strengths that made them stand out. If we are to achieve a sustainable future, it will have to begin here with a radical revamping of all modern building construction.

Middlebury Elementary’s focus on visible engineering, resilient design, and collaborative learning set us apart from the competition. Our interdisciplinary approach to design really shined, as some teams focused very little on the educational aspects of a school. Such a comprehensive and well thought out school truly could not have emerged from a team of only physics majors or mechanical engineers, and speaks to the value of a liberal arts education. Each and every one of our team members contributed an invaluable perspective to bring us here, and I am honored to have been part of such an inspirational and innovative team.

Thank you for your continued support,

 

– Alex ’18 Code Compliance / Electrical / Plumbing

 

P.S. As a final tidbit, I couldn’t help but notice that out of 8 school design finalists, only 3 were fully code compliant (one of which was ours!)

 

 

Hello from Denver!

Our team arrived late last night for the Department of Energy  Race to Zero presentations, bleary eyed but excited to be here. Since then, we have been running through our presentation over and over again to nail every detail and transition.  A few hours ago, we received our DOE ID cards and had our first introduction to the competition!

Tomorrow we will present at 10:45 am Mountain Time (12:45 pm Eastern time, 9:45 am Pacific Time) in front of the Jury. If you would like to watch our presentation, it can be found as a live stream by clicking here. There will also be a viewing party at the past Solar Decathlon House on Shannon street at 12:45 pm ET, click here for the facebook event.

From everything we heard in Middlebury, our Vermont counterparts knocked the symposium presentation out of the park! Its exciting to see how well all of our team members know every aspect of our design. Our Middlebury team lacked almost our entire mechanical team, yet still possessed an extensive knowledge of our building’s systems that allowed them to speak with confidence. Likewise, we are in Denver without our envelope design team and will need to do them justice tomorrow.

Wish us luck!

-Alex Browne ’18 Building Codes / Electrical / Plumbing

This Friday, our team will audaciously split into two and give simultaneous presentations across the country! Six of us will have arrived in Denver to present for the Department of Energy, and the rest will be at the Middlebury College Spring Symposium for a 30 minute long presentation followed by a Q & A.

Our Middlebury presentation will take place Friday April 20th in McCardell Bicentennial Hall room 311 at 1:30 pm. If you are at all interested in zero energy design or have questions about our project, please come by! Our website has been deliberately free of details on our project, as we believe many of our decisions will give us a competitive edge. This Friday though, the cat’s out of the bag! We will lay bare our entire process, beginning with site selection and continuing all the way to energy and mechanical design.

Our team has spent considerable time the past two weeks preparing these presentations, and we hope to convey our design clearly and succinctly. The material is accessible to all audiences, no matter your previous knowledge of zero energy. Following this week’s competition, our team will open up our design for all to view. In early May we will again present to the Middlebury Select Board. As always, feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions, and wish us luck!

 

-Alex Browne ’18 Building Codes / Electrical / Plumbing

It’s been a while since our last post, and you might be able to guess why! Our team has pulled all-nighter after all-nighter to get our final report in. We have been busy crunching numbers, generating figures, and writing about all of our design decisions over the past year. Today, after a grueling 48 hours without sleep for some of us, we submitted our final two volume 100 page report that details plans for a new Middlebury Elementary school.

We are immensely proud of our work thus far, but it doesn’t stop here! In the next week our team must prepare for what the Judges have jokingly referred to as “the shark tank”.  We will develop new presentation materials and delve deeper into our design so that we can concisely defend every decision we’ve made. And while our written submission is final for the judges, our team will continue editing our document until we know that it is fully complete.

What’s next you may ask? Quite a bit! April 19th our team will split in two, half of us traveling to Denver to present at the National Renewable Energy Lab, and half of us staying in Middlebury to present at the Spring student symposium. Then in May our team will then present our final design to the Middlebury select board. Our team is now primarily tasked with effectively communicating all the hard work we’ve done and refining a few last minute details.

But before we begin to write and rehearse presentations, another perhaps more important task awaits us. Right this moment across campus our team members are emerging from dark rooms and breathing a sigh of relief that our report is finally in. Many of us owe friends and parents a phone call to explain our recent absence, and all of us could use a full night’s sleep. So goodnight to you all, and thank you for your continued support!

-Alex Browne ’18 Electrical/Plumbing/Building Codes