University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign

Solar Decathlon 2011

Re-home, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, took first place in the Appliances Contest and Energy Balance Contest at the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011. It placed seventh overall in the competition. Today, Re-home is located in the south farm at the University of Illinois and is used for teaching, research, and public education.

The house was designed to provide a more sustainable housing solution for communities in the aftermath of a natural disaster. In such an event, Re-home can be mobilized quickly to a disaster site and assembled within several hours to shelter a family of four.

The house caught the interest of faculty in the university’s School of Social Work, who were interested in developing a simulation lab for home visits for their graduate students. They investigated Re-home, which is part of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, and ended up using the house for these simulated visits to make them more “real” than the classroom setting they typically involve. Read more about that at SmilePolitely.com.