From concept to reality, Cal State Fullerton students were given the opportunity to see their visions for sustainable design take shape as nearly 75 Titans represented the university last month at the Orange County Sustainability Decathlon hosted by the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa.
The first of its kind locally, OCSD challenged local university teams to develop innovative design ideas and energy-efficient housing solutions that support California’s goal of becoming “100% reliant on renewable energy by 2045.” With the belief that “education is the key to addressing climate change,” the competition allowed students to showcase their market-ready concepts for the public to tour over the two-weekend event.
As one of the 14 participating schools (10 competitive and four exhibitors), CSUF’s team kicked off the process more than a year ago with Phoolendra Mishra, CSUF professor and chair of the university’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, as its faculty adviser. The project, which was conducted outside of standard coursework, brought together a wide range of majors, including engineering, arts, computer science, biology and business marketing. The students began by putting their heads together to develop unique sustainable solutions that could be implemented in the built environment.
“The process was wide open, so anybody could bring in their ideas,” Mishra said. “The only goal was to identify the problems and come up with sustainable solutions. And then we worked together to say, OK, let’s move ahead with this one.”
The team explored solutions for design and construction methods that reduced energy consumption such as wall membrane and insulation, roof design and ventilation, thermal moisture and soundproofing, and water conservation.
While the Titan team did not participate in the full decathlon competition this year, the CSUF students did construct housing models that were featured in the Exhibition portion of the…
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