International student competition for tomorrow’s urban living

Eighteen teams of university students from all over the world are competing at the Solar Decathlon Europe 2022 in Wuppertal, Germany. The goal is to design and build the best solution to tomorrow’s urban challenges. Troldtekt is a partner for the competition and is sponsoring one of the projects.

The United Nations predicts that by 2050, 68 per cent of the global population will be living in urban areas. Therefore, it makes sense not just to think about building new, but also about how we can renovate, modernise and extend existing building stock and infrastructure – based on a scalable sustainability principle.

This was the preamble for the Solar Decathlon Europe 2022 competition, which is being held in Wuppertal. Here, 18 university teams from 11 countries are competing, each with their own idea, which they will both design and build in real life. The teams have qualified for the competition with their innovative housing projects, which will be fully functional residential one or two-storey houses.

All the projects will be exhibited in Wuppertal on 10-26 June 2022. The exhibition will be open to the public, and the students will be offering guided tours. At the same time, the projects will be assessed more closely, with a jury subsequently selecting the winning team based on certain criteria.

Troldtekt is a partner for Solar Decathlon Europe 2022, and has also sponsored a small batch of Troldtekt acoustic panels based on the cement type FUTURECEM™, which are being combined with the system solution Troldtekt ventilation. The Troldtekt solution will be part of a project by architecture students from FH Auchen – University of Applied Sciences.

Rethinking urban housing

The students from Aachen have designed a project under the title LOCAL+, where both community and sustainability have been incorporated into a housing concept for single people looking for greater social interaction.

The entire building functions as a large residential community, with communal areas where residents can eat together, watch a film or grow vegetables outdoors.

From the first to the fourth floor, small so-called CUBEs have been built. They constitute a key design feature of the project – also because they are fully movable. The CUBEs serve as both a personal base and possibly as a workspace, but as the rooms are small, it increases the level of interaction with other occupants while reducing the number of ‘wasted’ square metres of living space per person.

At the Solar Decathlon exhibition in June, visitors can see first-hand the project which the Aachen students have designed and built. Here, it is also possible to see how they have used Troldtekt acoustic panels based on the carbon-reduced cement type FUTURECEM – combined with Troldtekt ventilation, which ensures fresh air without draughts and noise.