FutureHAUS

Moving Forward

Virginia Tech’s Center for Design Research has been exploring the architecture and engineering of energy positive housing for more than two decades. Beginning with our first solar house, designed and constructed to compete in the inaugural D.O.E. Solar Decathlon competition in 2002, and culminating, four competitions later, with LumenHAUS, our first “smart home” prototype which won the inaugural Solar Decathlon Europe competition in 2010 in Madrid, Spain.

Since the first event, our research has been constantly evolving as technologies change and more efficient systems became available to the market. After 2010, we expanded our research focus to include smart home technologies and constructability with the concepts developed in the FutureHAUS prototypes. Unveiled in four phases-starting with the kitchen in 2015, the bathroom and living room in 2016, and culminating in the bedroom and home office in 2017- Virginia Tech and our industry partners are showing how smart design and technology can solve universal challenges in home building to make homes of the future more efficient, sustainable, and affordable. The FutureHAUS is the collection of these prototypes which make up a fully functional high performance smart home. In November 2018, we brought home first place in the Solar Decathlon Middle East, competing in Dubai against 14 international universities.

Now, together with our energy research, our building controls expertise and our new methods of constructability, we are ready to take on a new evolved comprehensive approach. An energy positive home that is prefabricated in an ideal factory setting, which utilizes new smart building technologies and maximizes both energy efficiency and addresses sustainability.

The FutureHAUS goes to Dubai

Virginia Tech won first place in the Solar Decathlon Middle East in November of 2018. The interdisciplinary team represented the United States and competed against 14 international universities from eleven countries. Created by the United States Department of Energy in 2002, the Solar Decathlon is an international biennial competition aimed at sustainability, innovation, and research.

The competition was located at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai, UAE, soon to be the largest single-site solar park in the world. The competition required houses to use solar energy as the only energy source and employ technologies that permit maximum energy efficiency.

The prefabricated modular design of the house allowed FutureHAUS Dubai to be constructed in just two days. Following the two week construction period, a ten day competition period challenged the team to complete tasks simulating real-life tasks, give tours to the public and juries, and perform tasks like hosting dinner parties and driving electric vehicles. International juries scored the house on criteria including Architecture, Sustainability, Innovation, Energy Efficiency and Engineering and Construction.

In addition to winning the competition, FutureHAUS Dubai took home the following trophies:

• First Place in Architecture
• First Place in House Functioning
• First Place in Sustainable Transportation
• First Place in Create Solutions
• Second Place in Interior Design
• Second Place in Sustainability
• Second Place in Innovation
• Third Place in Engineering and Construction
• Third Place in Energy Efficiency Measures
• Third Place in Comfort Conditions

Housing is about to get a whole lot better

In recent years, innovations in digital technologies, such as smartphones, computers and robotics for fabrication in construction have revolutionized the way we live, work and build. The presence of technology in everyday life has become so engrained that it would be impossible to function today without it - as we have fully embraced the expectation of convenience and support that high performance technology offers. While present cutting-edge technology has been well integrated into the design and manufacturing most high-performance products like aircraft, automobiles, appliances and computers, the construction industry, by contrast, has been slow if not resistant to change in its operations.

A New Way to Build

To improve the construction process by proposing that house components called “cartridges” can be prebuilt in factories, fully engaging industrialized methods of fabrication.

A New Way to Live

To propose new ways to introduce technology in our lifestyles. We explore wide ranging of digital technologies to find the strongest architectural and practical solutions, features, and interfaces that can be seamlessly integrated into our homes.