The team of National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (hereinafter referred to as NYCU) won first place in Architecture and third place in Innovation at the contest Solar Decathlon Europe 2021/2022 with their work “1 House for All”. The team stated that they would continue to promote sustainable architecture in Taiwan while creating international cooperation with university teams from six European countries by setting up a multinational research consortium for further research on sustainability issues.
The project “1 House for All” presented by TDIS (Transdisciplinary Design Innovation Shop) Center of NYCU is the result of collaborations between the university, industry, government, and research institutes; this project consists of building Taiwan’s first locally made heavy timber construction in cooperation with the Forestry Bureau and the Experimental Forest Internship Factory of National Taiwan University. The team also develops a circular building system in collaboration with Tung Ho Steel, Excellentechnik Ltd., Chungann Wellsun Ltd., and Nan Ya Plastics. With the support of many top domestic enterprises in terms of funding and materials, as well as technical guidance and financial assistance from governmental departments, the Taiwan team of NYCU finally had the opportunity to go to Europe after two years and eight months of research and development.
How can contemporary architecture make people’s lives healthier in the current world, where changes happen constantly and dramatically due to the pandemic? Regarding the issues, C. David Tseng, Professor Cheng-Te Tseng, Director of the TDIS Center pointed out, “The paradigm of global architecture continues to change, from green buildings to well buildings, then from well buildings to the current hot topic: sustainable buildings. Yet what has not changed over time is precisely the continuous search for sustainable harmony between people and the natural and social environment.” The competition’s project manager, Assistant Professor Sheng-Kai Tseng, further explained, “For the contest this time, we aim to build a zero-energy building with net-zero carbon emissions. We use Taipei as the design target for the 10 challenges in the contest, hoping to make zero-energy sustainable buildings and architecture an opportunity for urban renewal, so Taiwan may once again become one of the world’s top sustainable cities!”
The TDIS team proposed three major design solutions for this competition: the first solution is the “energy-saving sharing station” that uses the energy-saving concept of a passive house combined with AIoT indoor automatic adjustment to achieve net-zero energy consumption; the second solution is the “zero-carbon transitional housing” that uses the design of the circular building and industry integration to achieve the vision of equal opportunity housing; the third solution is the “community-industry co-housing” that combines carbon-trading and social enterprise as a business model to achieve sustainable development. The team proposed a white book on sustainable urban development strategies for Taipei, Germany, and other developed cities worldwide based on the contemporary housing dilemmas in Taiwan, such as high energy consumption in urban buildings, residential justice, and stagnation of urban renewals. Upon these issues, “1 House for All” appears to be a low-carbon, affordable, and inter-generational healthy and co-habitable urban project that can spread from Taiwan to the world. Chi-Hung Lin, President of NYCU, says, “This is the first time for our school to participate in the Olympic-level Green Building Competition in Europe as the leader of a university-level research center, and is also the first time for us to attend an international competition after the campus merger. The content of this project embodies the social responsibility that NYCU values the most as an outstanding university, which is to bring low carbon, affordable, and sustainable urban development across generations for developed cities worldwide.”
This contest’s project also sets a new milestone for the domestic forestry industry chain. Chief Secretary of the Forestry Bureau Li-Wen Chiu said, “With the efforts of the Experimental Forest Internship Factory of National Taiwan University and the TDIS team from NYCU, we have created the first 100% made-in-Taiwan heavy timber construction building! Under the assistance of the Forestry Bureau, 2017 marked the beginning of an era for the domestic timber industry after we declared the goal of improving timber utilization and worked on developing new plantations, forest management, and national timber production simultaneously. By participating in this competition, we also want to announce to the people and industries, both domestically and internationally, that Taiwan possesses abundant forestry resources as well as strong research and development, production, and manufacturing technology in the timber industries. We welcome the domestic and foreign construction industry to take a look at Taiwan’s heavy timber construction and to bring forth the blooming of sustainable negative carbon buildings like this in Taiwan!”
On May 16th, 2022, the team flew to Germany to participate in the Solar Decathlon Europe and started work on May 20th in Wuppertal, Germany, where the students built the “1 House for All” prototype house within 10 days. After the opening on June 10th, an international committee evaluated the construction design with 10 green building indicators while competing with 19 other university teams from 11 countries along with English tours for visitors worldwide. On June 25th, a “Taiwan Culture Day” was held, followed by the transformation of the “Living Lab,” a three-year research base for sustainable architecture in Taiwan and Germany, at the site of the contest. NYCU indicated the team returned home with fruitful achievements is exactly the way to show the world “Taiwan can help, and Taiwan is Helping!” The university also pledged to promote sustainable development education, international cooperation, industrial transformation, and policy development in the future.
