| Video |
| Inside the house |
| Form follows energy |
| Project participants |
“A solar house should be made from a solar material such as wood.”
Salvador Rueda, Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona
“Rather than making solar houses, we can create self-sufficient habitats that are able to produce energy, food and other goods.”
Vicente Guallart, IAAC
“The Fab Lab House is developed on a network of fabrication laboratories using CNC machines to design and produce houses than can be customizable by the inhabitants, and at the same time adaptable to the environmental conditions”
Neil Gershenfeld, Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT
The Fab Lab House won Solar Decathlon Europe 2010 people’s choice award. In Madrid more than 20,000 people, who interested in solar house design, have visited the most liked and popular solar house in Spain, designed and manufactured by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC).
Prince Felipe of Spain said it looked like a wooden boat but the spectacular prefab solar house produced by Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia was also called “peanut house” “cinnamon submarine,” “forest zeppelin” or “whale belly”.
The queues to visit the Fab Lab prefab house have greatly surprised the design team of the project: more than 20,000 visitors saw the solar prefab house during the ten days of Solar Decathlon Europe competition. The design team has been awarded with the people’s choice award. “This is a really important award for us – said Daniel Ibanez, Co-Director of the Fab Lab project – because compared to other solar houses we wanted to achieve a very human house. We wanted to make a house to live more than a technology showroom.”
However the Fab Lab house has also introduced significant innovations and state-of-the-art technologies such as the most efficient in the world flexible solar panels, designed and made with both American and Spanish technologies. This created a great interest among people and companies who visited the solar prefab house and it represents an important and significant breakthrough in the sustainable architecture and using of flexible solar panels in facades and roofs. “We wanted to overcome the idea that a solar house is a traditional house with solar panels on top and a lot of modern technology inside. Our project is a full solar house, a new generation of building that visitors have come to appreciate.” says the co-director of the Fab Lab project.
“The competition has been a great way to push the spirit of innovation in the field of architecture and construction in these times of crisis. We will propose that future editions will add tests where they value passive energy solutions in the design of buildings rather than the high consumption of energy to achieve comfort conditions. A solar house competition in Europe should overcome the American technical understanding, and bring values related to outdoor space and the social use of energy” says Vicente Guallart, Director of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.
So far the solar prefab house has already attracted the interest of the media and the public. The Fab Lab house has been put up for sale from € 45,000 + VAT. Various possible house configurations are defined: Villa (96 +96 sqm), House (60 +60 sqm), Studio (36 sqm), Shelter (24 sqm) and Cottage (12 sqm).
The Fab Lab project, which involved experts, engineers and architects from 20 countries, is being developed by the worldwide network of Fab Labs, The Center for Bits and Atoms from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC). The project participants include following companies: Schneider Electric, Endesa, Visoren, Santa & Cole, Roca, Vincon and Nani Marquina.
