The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is held every two years at the National Mall in Washington DC. 2011 will feature for the first time an entry from the Southern Hemisphere. FirstLight house from Victoria University will challenge 19 other teams from around the world in a series of 10 contests to see who has designed and constructed the house that best fulfils the following criteria:

• Is affordable, attractive, and easy to live in
• Maintains comfortable and healthy indoor environmental conditions
• Supplies energy to household appliances for cooking, cleaning, and entertainment
• Provides adequate hot water
• Produces as much or more energy than it consumes.

The New Zealand house: FirstLight
The driving theme behind the FirstLight team is the building typology of the “Kiwi bach”, which symbolises in built form how New Zealanders interface the interior and the landscape of New Zealand.

“As primarily a summer destination, life at the bach takes place as much outside, on large decks and patios, as it does inside. Our house brings these ideals of bach life into a contemporary setting, providing a permanent residence where recreation and social activities are united with environmentally sound technologies.”

The traditional “Kiwi bach” constructed of found and reused materials and the interstitial space is somewhat of a paradox to the high technology of a transportable energy-generating machine.

Since becoming Finalists in the competition in April the FirstLight house team have been busy resolving their design and documentation for consent. Critical to the project is the energy consumption and the one-week construction time frame. Extensive modelling to produce Building Information Models have enabled the team to ensure the project can meet the extensive energy and climatic specifications.

Currently the team is in the final throws of achieving building consent with construction due to start in January.

GRAPHISOFT New Zealand is sponsoring the FirstLight team and will be following them on the path to Washington in September.