25.05.2014 Live monitoring of the final of Solar Decathlon Europe!

We're approaching the decisive phase of the international Solar Decathlon Europe 2014 competition, the Olympics of sustainable architecture. After achieving third place two years ago with the MED in Italy house, we're back in the race as the radiant heating and cooling partner in the all-Italian sustainable urban habitation project, RhOME for denCity.

Live monitoring: http://www.solardecathlon2014.fr/en/monitoring

THE COMPETITION

Solar Decathlon is an international competition organized by the U.S. Department of Energy in which universities from all over the world meet to design, build and operate an energy self-sufficient home, powered by solar energy and equipped with all the technologies necessary to maximize efficiency. During the final phase of the competition, each team assembles their home and exhibits it to the public at the National Mall in Washington DC, subjecting it to ten different trials, (hence the name “Decathlon”).

For the European edition, the finals will be held in Versailles from June 27, 2014. The competition, which takes place over a period of 15 days, is open to the public and to professionals, hosting the 20 teams and their solar houses within the same exhibition space. Each house is rated on the basis of 10 trials (decathlon) by a jury comprising construction professionals, technicians and scientists. The house’s performances are assessed using measurement instruments and then rated using predefined criteria. The team that attains the highest score wins the competition.

THE PROJECT 

RhOME, a home for ROME, represents a systematic series of operations that may be applied in a wide variety of contexts to concretize the idea of a Smart City. The RhOME team involves professors and researchers from three departments at the University of Rome (Tre): Architecture, Business Studies and Engineering, and a department of Milan Polytechnic. The Versailles prototype represents the top floor of a complex urban building. This choice derives from the intention to describe the architectural features and technological innovations that would not appear in a communal floor or on the ground floor, where the focus is on integration with the urban environment. The prototype inherits the distribution system from the aggregation: access is to the side and, as in the urban configuration, there is a central distribution core, which serves the apartments on both sides. During the contest this distribution pattern is reproduced for the public walk-through, which highlights the freedom of the plan.

OUR CONTRIBUTION...

We are proud to participate again at Solar Decathlon, supporting the Rhome Team with our expertise in the field of Radiant Comfort, as the official supplier of the heating/cooling system and related components:

• Underfloor radiant system Zeromax at minimum thickness.
   
• New air treatment machine DEUCLIMA-VMC for indoor air renewal and humidity control.
   
• SMARTCOMFORT control system for maximum energy saving.

For further information: www.rhomefordencity.it