Solar Decathlon: Pittsburgh's Synergy House
by Justin Thomas, Virginia on 10.17.05
Pittsburgh's entry into the Solar Decathlon 2005 was exercise in angles, with its north and south walls tilting 12 degrees to the south. To let in natural light and winter sun, the south wall enclosing the "great room" living and office space is all glass, with manually operated shades. The concrete floor of the great room stores heat from both sun and in-floor radiant heat pipes in the winter and keeps cool in the summer.
The Pittsburgh Decathlon Team called itself Synergy, because it was a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, and The Art Institute of Pittsburgh.
Go Pittsburgh! (My hometown) Perhaps this will do something for the image of the Burgh as a dirty smoky city (hasn't been for years)
And don't forget - Pittsburgh supposedly has the most LEED-certified buildings of any city, including the largest in the world, the Lawrence Convention Center.
Not bad for a little old mill town with only 400k people.
Carl: We're getting another one soon, too (CS dept at CMU). I think almost all of CMU's recent construction has been LEED-certified -- the latest dorm, the new building that holds some of the CS research groups + Intel research pittsburgh, etc. It's really nice. Now if only they would upgrade from LEED-Silver to LEED-Gold as their target. :)
Dave,
CMU never fails to surprise.
Here in Chicago, the city wrote basic LEED certification into the building code for all city buildings - police stations, libraries, firehouses, etc. They've built a bunch, and have dozens heading for construction.
It's funny how so many local entities are embracing these standards while the Federal Government remains oblivious.