The results of International Solar Building Design Competition 2015 came out recently. The theme of this year’s competition is “sunshine and beautiful village”. In the process of building beautiful villages and promoting industrialization, it is necessary to apply renewable resources such as solar energy, and green and low carbon building technology in pursuit of affordable livable rural housing. The subjects of this competition are low energy-consumption housing for farmers in Qinghai Province and rural housing industrialization in the Residential Park, Huangshi City. The competition aims to practice the utilization of green, low carbon, and healthy technologies like solar impulse. Two teams of Southeast University harvested second prizes and one team harvested excellent prize.
The aim of the competition is to promote and spread the idea of solar buildings. Therefore, before starting the competition the work of Special Committee of Solar Buildings is focused on the popularization of solar basic knowledge. Through all kinds of media channels such as columns, magazines, web sites and others the existing situation of solar buildings in China, excellent cases and advanced products have been introduced to the social masses. 265 teams from around the globe submitted their cases and 250 among them were declaimed valid. Two cases were selected as first prize winners, four were selected as second prize winners, six were selected as third prize winners, and some were selected as excellent prize winners.
The second prize winner, Wu Changliang and his team named their case “Knot Of Sunshine”. The meaning of the name “Knot of sunshine”characterizes the Tibetan auspicious knot,connects the mountains and river with residence, forms a harmonious neighborhood. The case on the basis of analysis of the present conditions of the site and the climatic feature of Qinghai,and the residential architectural features of Tibetan and habits of local farmers,simplifies the design of the Qingha auspicious knot as the starting point for the design;connects the mountains and river by adjusting the layout of two residential groups; solves the problems of heating in winter and ventilation in summer with the ventilation towers,solar house, chasing light blinds,energ-saving insulation wall; and finally deterimines the placement of solar hot water and solar photovoltaic on the basis of the analysis of the light environment simulation.
Another SEU second prize winner team named their case “Congregate Solar Housing”. Their design extracts the south room with courtyard from the folk and put it into a compound cluster. As a consequence, each house has a good sunshine and the energy lose has been minimized. What’s more, buildings formed together to be a barrier to withstand the harsh environment. Meanwhile, the pubic and agriculture space are surrounded by the volumes and exchange solar energy with buildings.
The case “Love·Box·Home”, which won an excellent prize, is a container under the requirements of industrialization. It is a box related to the nature, which improves the comfort of the building through designing, so that wind, sun and rain can become one part of the box. It is also a Happiness Box carrying changes and inherits, which is expected to meet the demands of different users via the improvement of industrialization and modularization.
