The Curio House team traveled to Washington with high hopes, but they're coming home feeling a little under-appreciated.
The solar-powered house, which students from Tufts and the Boston Architectural College (BAC) built on Tufts' campus over the summer, placed 15th out of a field of 20 international competitors at the 2009 Solar Decathlon.
The U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored competition was held on the National Mall in downtown Washington from Oct. 9 through this past Sunday. The results of the competition were announced on Friday.
For many members of Team Boston, the approximately 100 Tufts and BAC students who constructed the Curio House, the result proved less than satisfactory.
"We were a little disappointed," said Senior Matthew Thoms, head engineer for Team Boston.
But the group fared better in several of the 10 specialized contests on which the overall scores were based.
Team Boston placed sixth in the architecture contest, which measured the aesthetics and design of the house, and eighth in communications, which judged the group's success in spreading information about the project through its Web site and exhibit at the decathlon.
Other competition categories included lighting design, market viability and comfort zone, which measured the house's ability to maintain a comfortable indoor atmosphere.
Thoms pointed out that the team faced some extenuating circumstances during the competition. For one, he said that a lack of sun hurt the Curio House's prospects.
"I think we would have done better with a little more sun, but it was cloudy and rainy," Thoms said. "You get a hundred points if you make more energy than you consume throughout the week; that would've put us at eighth or ninth place."
Members of Team Boston traveled to Washington with the house they had built in Medford broken down into pieces. Once they arrived on the National Mall, the students reassembled it for display at the decathlon.
Associate Provost and Professor of Mechanical Engineering Vincent Manno, who oversaw the project, said that the students seemed not to focus too much on their scores. Instead, he said, they were glad to have competed. Team Boston was among 20 teams selected by the Department of Energy from a pool of about 60.
"There were no losers on the mall because we'd already been accepted," Manno said.
Thoms offered several reasons to explain the Curio House's low standings.
Thoms said that many of the other teams had more people involved in the building process throughout the summer. While these teams had the manpower to build nearly every day of the week, Tufts and BAC students only built about three days a week.
Team Boston was also only able to test its systems once the members got to Washington, whereas many teams finished their houses early for testing.
"Not being able to test anything in our house ended up hurting us and losing us some points," Thoms said. "But I think that our design was comparable to everyone else's."
He also noted that the students working on the Curio House entered the competition as a side project, not a full-time occupation. Manno said that Spain's government granted its team one million euros for construction and transportation, while the University of Darmstadt allowed Team Germany, which won the decathlon for the second time in a row, to take off from school for three semesters to work on the project.
"It wasn't like the Olympics, where two competitors are running on the same track," Manno said.
Manno praised Team Boston's students for building a sustainable, economically viable home while remaining in line with the group's priorities. He believed that the Curio House achieved its vision in spite of the competition's strict stipulations.
"We played by the rules, but not to the rules," Manno said. "If there was something that didn't make sense for the vision that students had, then we didn't incorporate it."
Thoms had hoped that the Curio House would take first place in the market viability competition, which measures the house's ability to remain both affordable and commercially appealing to the public. Thoms said that the house would cost around $350,000 on the market and that Team Germany, with a house that would cost $2 million, had placed higher in the market viability category.
Still, both Thoms and Manno stressed that the reception the Curio House received from people walking through the mall was incredibly favorable.
"There were really only a few teams that targeted low-income housing the way we did," Thoms said. "We were disappointed [by] our standing in the market viability competition, but we were happy with the input from the public."
During the competition, Team Boston closed a deal to sell the house to the Housing Assistance Corporation of Cape Cod, an affordable housing and development organization. The corporation plans to build a green village and use the houses there to train workers for practicing sustainability.
"We're really excited about the outcome," Thoms said.
