On Fourth Street SW sits a dilapidated house, windows covered with wooden blocks, doors and window screens leaning against the wall. Originally built in the 1860s, this historic yet rundown building is now being transformed into an energy-efficient, wheelchair-accessible, affordable residence through the efforts of University students and professors.
These students and faculty are participating in what is called the ecoMOD project, "a research and design/build/evaluate project ... that aims to create a series of ecological, modular and affordable house prototypes," according to the project's Web site. This multi-year project is a joint effort by the Architecture School and the Engineering School, but also involves students studying subjects ranging from economics to nursing.
Asst. Architecture Prof. John Quale, ecoMOD project director, created the program in 2004 after collaborating with the Engineering School on the Solar Decathalon, a design-build competition to create a completely solar-powered house.
"I wanted to continue the exciting collaboration that [the Architecture and Engineering schools] had on the Solar Decathalon," Quale said, noting that the Solar Decathalon results showed room for improvement in terms of making this type of housing a viable option.
"The thing that really struck me about that event, in the end, was that it wasn't even close to being affordable for anyone in the real world," he said. "Looking at the challenges of affordable housing in the U.S., as well as this region, [we wanted to] focus on how to bring sustainability to affordable housing."
The current ecoMOD team of about 29 undergraduate and graduate students and faculty members is working on the third ecoMOD project in partnership with the Piedmont Housing Alliance, which owns the Fourth Street house.
The residence "is a pretty interesting building that has a really rich and layered history," Quale said. "If you look at the history of the building and the series of additions put on over the last 150 years, they represent different eras of history, and you can learn something about the families that lived in the home and what material and construction skills they had available to them. It's very unusual to be able to work with a building like that."
In modifying the house, the ecoMOD group plans not only to design a modular, energy-efficient residence, but to preserve the building's history.
"It's in pretty bad shape, but when the students are done with it, it's going to be a great example of multi-faceted historic preservation," Quale said. "It's going to tell the story over time."
To accomplish their preservation and renovation goals, team members have focused on communication and small group work. Fourth-year Engineering student Alison Tramba, for example, is working with project management software called Sakai.
"The software includes a place where you can save files, a wiki feature [a collaborative Web site that allows visitors to edit content] that students can update with their progress, sign up lists [and] a discussion board," Tramba said. These features "help people communicate better within their project team."
One of the Architecture project managers, graduate student Beth Kahley, said she and a partner are coordinating the work of other students in the Architecture studio.
"We have 16 students in the studio, and the students are broken up by different areas of design -- landscape design, exteriors, interior design, green roof design," Kahley said, noting that she also works with Quale and the engineering team. "It's a lot of meetings with lots of different people."
In addition to the designing and building aspects of the project, an integral part of ecoMOD is evaluation of the product.
"The way this project works, it's an every-other-year design/build, and on the off-year, they are evaluating the house they just constructed," Kahley said. "The evaluation is from the perspective of monitoring energy and water consumption, temperature and humidity so we can see if the house is as energy efficient as we designed it to be."
Fourth-year Engineering student Brian Hickey, ecoMOD construction manager, said the team has implemented an energy-monitoring system in the last two houses it has designed, as well as in its current house.
According to students, the combination of evaluation with the designing and building aspects of the project has made ecoMOD a valuable experience.
"This has been the most concrete, hands-on project I've ever been involved with," Tramba said. "The fact that it's a design/build/evaluate project [means you] need to take a look at every aspect of the project. For me, it's shown what a real application for engineering could be."
Students also said the interdisciplinary aspect of the project has been educational.
Hickey said he appreciates the opportunity the project has given him to work with a multitude of people and various disciplines.
"I've learned more about the construction field and the green technology field than I could have ever done otherwise," Hickey said. "It's been an incredibly rewarding experience for me."
Others said the connection between ecoMOD and their careers has made the experience particularly interesting.
"I think that this project is the best experience I will have had in all of my years at U.Va. -- both my undergraduate and graduate degree," Kahley said. "It represents a lot of what I'm interested in pursuing in my career, in terms of sustainability, ecological design and a collaboration between architects and engineers. And I think that doing a design-build project is unique in the Architecture school, because usually architecture work is somewhat theoretical."
Faculty team members said they have benefited in numerous ways from taking part in the ecoMOD project as well.
"This project is directly related to my research and my interests, so it has obviously helped me become a better teacher and a better designer," Quale said. "The thing that's most enjoyable about ecoMOD is working with students and on complex problems and helping them get to that level where they can solve these themselves and take [the problems] on in a rigorous and thoughtful and exciting way."
Quale emphasized the fact that it is the students themselves who are behind the project's design and construction. He also stressed the integral role of the student management team.
"They really do make the decisions," Quale said. "This year in particular, it's not only a very strong team, but a very strong management team on both the architecture and engineering sides, and that bodes well for the success of the project."
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