SCI-Arc/Caltech Virtual Tour – Solar Decathlon 2011

(music playing) It is something else to finally be here. It
has taken two-and-a-half years and 120 students to get here, so it’s been extraordinary.
Our building is called “CHIP” – it stands for “compact hyper-insulated prototype.”
So the insulation in that name says it all – that’s a huge component of the building. (music playing) So, this house is going in Los Angeles which
is a really dense urban environment so one of the things we’ve done is we’ve removed
the walls in the house and a made a large continuous space instead and we’ve divided
up the levels of the house by putting things higher than others. (music playing) So the wall behind us is entirely programmable
and the furniture is designed entirely by students and it literally pops out, it’s
foam, it’s very light to handle and move around the house, to be able to use the house
for different things, the shelves pop off and you can put them wherever you want to
customize it. One of the most interesting things is we have a lot of really fun ways
to interact with the house. We built an iPad application where you can just click on the
devices you want to turn on and off. So, insulation is not typically a very sexy
part of architecture so usually you will hide it in a wall and let it go. What we decided
to do is accentuate it — accentuate our high insulation value. So the first thing we do
is wrap the entire building in these blankets of insulation, they’re made of denim, recycled
blue jeans, essentially, and then we have to have the skin fit the building, and fit
CHIP itself. So, we have done that, we’ve pre-manufactured it to the shape of CHIP,
we set it on top of the building and we drape it down, and then tuck it into the windows
and doors, and tuft it in place, and cable as you can see on the outside. (music playing)