Rendition of Phoenix House. Courtesy U of L.
Look at all the attention University of Louisville is getting for winning the men’s national basketball championship and sending its women’s team to its championship game, too.
Now just imagine if our society placed a similar emphasis on academics, particularly environmental engineering.
You can imagine, anyway, starting today, when U of L announced that a team had started work on its entry in the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2013 Solar Decathlon.
And get this, the project is actually a partnership between U of L, University of Kentucky, and Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. Don’t these people know they are supposed to hate each other because of sports?
They are calling it Phoenix House and it is rising on the University of Louisville’s Belknap Campus.
The team is among 20 that qualified internationally to design, build and exhibit solar-powered houses at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, Calif., Oct. 3-13.
The energy-efficient, wood-and-metal structure is a prototype two-bedroom residence for disaster relief. The team chose the design partially in response to last spring’s damaging tornadoes in Kentucky and Indiana, according to a U of L press release.
I want one.
“As Team Kentuckiana’s design, Phoenix House is intended to function as a permanent housing solution for reconstruction after natural disasters, specifically in tornado-prone areas,” said project faculty mentor Mark McGinley, U of L endowed chair in infrastructure research. ”It will produce more energy than it uses and is designed to be very durable and affordable.”
Did I say I want one?
Phoenix House will be constructed mostly at U of L and then shipped to California and reassembled by students this fall at the competition site.
Read more about it here.
Interior of Phoenix House. Courtesy U of L.
