Third Quadrant Design, a multidisciplinary green building design team of UBC students, placed third at the 2024 Solar Decathlon Design Competition. The team, including Bachelor of Design students Mia Torrence and Marco He, presented their design in the Attached Housing category at the competition in Golden, Colorado. Their project was a low-carbon retrofit of a Vancouver Special and focused on replicability in the design. The design employed net-zero energy and climate and seismic resilience engineering techniques to add 4 units to the existing single-family home.
A team of dedicated students from our university secured third place in the prestigious U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon® Design Challenge, specifically in the attached housing division. This international competition encourages collegiate teams to design highly efficient, low-carbon buildings that address critical real-world issues such as climate resilience, affordability, and energy efficiency.
The Solar Decathlon Design Challenge is a hallmark event that seeks to inspire and equip the next generation of building professionals. By engaging in this competition, students gain hands-on experience in creating sustainable, zero-energy buildings, contributing to the transformation of the building industry towards more eco-friendly practices. Since its inception, the competition has seen participation from over 6,000 students representing 218 collegiate institutions across 47 U.S. states and 32 countries.
Our university’s team, Third Quadrant Design, known by many for their project “Third Space Commons,” participated in the 2023-2024 academic year with a new leadership team at the helm. Their project, “Vancouver Special 2.0,” was a response to the ongoing housing crisis in Vancouver. The team proposed a densification project by retrofitting a classic Vancouver Special —a vernacular house style popular in the 1960s during an immigration boom— into four separate units. This innovative approach aims to provide more equitable and sustainable housing options across the city.
The Vancouver Special was originally designed to accommodate two units on a single-family lot, making it an ideal candidate for the team’s densification project. By transforming one of these houses into four high-performance living spaces, the team demonstrated a replicable solution to increase housing density without the need for demolition. Their project emphasized affordability, replicability, resilience, and net-zero energy design.
In April, six team leads traveled to Colorado to present their project at the Solar Decathlon finals, where they were recognized for their outstanding work with a third-place finish in the attached housing division. This accomplishment is a testament to the team’s dedication, creativity, and commitment to addressing pressing societal issues through sustainable design.
The project’s key goals included:
- Affordability & Availability: Providing equitable housing options for immigrants, students, and new families by offering four units on a single lot.
- Replicability: Designing a non-intrusive retrofit that complies with existing bylaws, making it accessible to homeowners and small-scale developers.
- Resilience: Enhancing the building’s resilience against extreme climate and seismic risks to ensure safety and comfort for its occupants.
- Net-Zero Energy: Embedding net-zero energy and carbon principles into the design, contributing to a sustainable urban environment.
We are very proud of the Third Quadrant Design team for their innovative approach and success in the Solar Decathlon Design Challenge. Their work not only highlights the talent and ingenuity of our students but also underscores the importance of sustainable design in tackling global housing and environmental challenges.
Congratulations to the entire team for their remarkable achievement!