14-07-2014

The Italian team from "Roma Tre" tops the podium with their project for the Solar Decathlon Europe

The Italian team from Roma Tre University tops the podium with their project for the Solar Decathlon Europe 2014

Rome, 14 July 2014 – Italy has won one world cup, that of energy efficiency, innovation, sustainability and beauty. RhOME for denCity – the solar house designed and built by the Architecture Department at Roma Tre University, also thanks to the energy-consumption analysis, monitoring and control solutions provided by the AlmavivA Group, SEM – has beaten Germany, Chile and Holland at the Solar Decathlon, the Olympics of sustainable architecture. The competition, launched in 2002 by the United States Department of Energy, was held this year in Versailles from 27 June to 12 July.

"This win is also a victory for Italy, which knows how to produce innovation, creativity and commitment in a key sector", says Chiara Tonelli, team leader for RhOME. "It's not just a success for us, but also for the group of companies of excellence which helped us to construct this house, capable of responding to the challenge posed: living in an ecological way in ever more densely populated cities".

"It is also the result of these intense months of work, the sum of the passion and perseverance of the whole team. We didn't set out to win the individual tests, but rather to ensure that the house was truly functional, to make the dream a reality: RhOME was not intended to remain as an idea on a page, but to construct a real alternative, able to face environmental and energy challenges. This house is a response to the need to increase urban density, eliminating energy waste, ugliness, illegal practices and degradation, and increasing social integration and the ability to respond collectively to the crisis".

“To have really energy-efficient houses, says Stefano Capelli, manager for the Green area and New Business Projects within the AlmavivA Group, it is vital to have an excellent IT system that allows management of the complex elements involved with effective, intuitive instruments, using devices with which we are used to interacting: telephones, tablets and computers. AlmavivA, through SEM, has created a system that can be used at home, has been successfully tested, and can be applied in less sophisticated versions than that used for the competition. That is to say, it has created highly efficient new residential spaces, as well as re-qualifying existing complexes in terms of their energy consumption. The aim of SEM, Capelli of AlmavivA concludes, is to offer the minimum amount of information necessary to obtain maximum energy efficiency, simply and effectively".

The contests at Solar Decathlon were a real challenge for RhOME, the living space studied for the requalification of areas subject to unauthorised building in the Tor Fiscale quarter of Rome. It underwent tests on construction and architectural quality, engineering, energy efficiency, sustainability, design and transformability, communication and ability to enhance public awareness. In addition, the energy consumption, comfort levels and functioning of the house were monitored by judges throughout the whole competition. Ten contests, as the name suggests, for the Decathlon which highlighted how this house – designed to produce more energy than is consumed, to use passive defence instruments against both hot and cold temperatures, to keep the air quality under control and to allow use for both residential and work purposes – is a winning proposal for a low-carbon-emission society.

Team effort, innovation and close attention to social integration and inclusion are the key strengths of the RhOME prototype.