For the past two years, sustainable research has been centered on North House, where David Lieberman as one of three Faculty leads and Technical Advisor to a building recently showcased in the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon on the Mall in Washington DC, as one of twenty experimental houses from around the world, receiving 4th place in the competition.  North House is a joint venture of the University of Waterloo, Ryerson University, and Simon Fraser University.  Although the competition is primarily focused on photovoltaics, North House is an example of a fully integrated design approach in terms of both passive and active solar factors, building enclosures systems, and the development of management software and its user interface.  The project is to be re erected as a permanent installation and living laboratory to further development of a multi layered operable blind system with interior and exterior programmable operations controlled by thermal and climatic sensors as an integral part of a high efficiency glazing wall with a soon to be patented mechanically fastened self sealing thermally inert structural curtain wall system.  The installation in Washington DC also included use of an unprecedented photovoltaic array as the cladding in a rain screen assembly with Underwriters Laboratory approval received with testing of the installation on the Mall. The work in Washington has led to the possibility of continuing research work with the University of Michigan, the University of Tennessee, Darmstadt Technical University, and the first European Solar Decathlon to be held in Madrid in June of 2010. Major publication of the work is forthcoming in 2010. The work has been presented in a number of forums and conferences in North America by Faculty leads Ekaterina Velikov and Geoffrey Thun, formerly of the University of Waterloo, now teaching at the University of Michigan, and will be presented at the European Energy Forum in Bressanone, Italy in December 2009.    

www.team-north.com 

www.solardecathlon.org