Building the future

Texas A&M architecture students created a prototype for a "house of the future" using technology and new architecture practices in the spring.

The architecture students started looking at ways to take existing technology and incorporate it into the construction of new buildings during an inaugural Mitchell Lab Visiting Designer Program and partnered with Emergent, an organization dedicated to architectural research based in Los Angeles.

"This project was a housing prototype called ‘house for the future' and the idea behind it was part of Mitchell Lab and [its] ways of investigating new technology with new ideas about architecture," said Gabriel Esquivel, an assistant professor of architecture and project director.

This project involved multiple A&M students who had the chance to design and work with big name companies in producing the prototype.

"It was a combination of several students; it was not only third year [students], it was a combination of second year students, third year students and fourth year students, so it's a really vertical studio," Esquivel said. "It was approximately six students from second year, 10 students from third year and four students from fourth year so it was a very large project."

Mitchell Rocheleau, class of 2011, worked closely with the Los Angeles firm and was a vital part in the project's completion.

"My part was to serve as a representative of the firm in Los Angeles that we worked with," Rocheleau said. "I worked there previously and that was our partners that we did the project with."

Students were grateful in getting a chance to work on something that could change house design forever.

"What I liked about it was that no other sophomores, probably in the United States, at a undergrad level was doing what we were doing. We were the emerging group of students form the University trying to put A&M on the map it was interesting," said Dylan Weiser, a junior environmental design major.

The house does not use common materials like wood, brick or steel for its construction. The architecture team at the University spent approximately seven weeks to complete the project, Esquivel said.

"[The house] is not really using materials you would traditional see in like a suburban house the house is actually constructed out of a carbon fiber layup process so its basically layers of resin and carbon fiber, similar to what you would see in sailboats construction, cars and that type of thing," Rocheleau said. "It's a process of using the multiple layers variable thickness in these layups to achieve structural stability in places were we need it to hold up."

Using today's technology, Tom Wiscombe, founder of Emergent and Esquivel created the house prototype. The team used a grey-water system where water is sent into a pump and storage room where it is purified and injected with phosphate powder a catalyst for the photosynthetic reaction. Water dissolves the phosphate and is pumped through the booms into polycarbonate bubbles within the opaque shell of the house. An artificial solar leaf uses sunlight to power the lithium battery complex in an electrical room. These batteries will charge during sunlight hours when the reaction occurs and each leaf can produce 45 hours of energy.

The students at the University put in many hours to see this project through and were happy to see the results of their labor.

"The fact that we were with the project from start to finish. Figuring out the mechanical, electrical and plumping and all the things involved," Rocheleau said. "To see a project done that way from its original roots all the way to its finish product was amazing."