The HUNGARIAN NEST+ model house, built by a consortium of the universities of Pécs and Miskolc, combining natural renewable energies and innovative engineering solutions, was a great success at the Solar Dechatlon 2019 World University Innovation Architecture Competition, and is also of interest to the organisers of the Dubai Expo. Recently, the project and its further development were presented by the staff of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology of the University of Pécs as the only Hungarian participant in an online presentation at the pre-event of the world's largest exhibition. Following last year's success, the team of students and lecturers from Pécs is already preparing for the 2022 Solar Decathlon in Wuppertal, also with the design of a low-budget, energy-plus passive house, the main feature of which is that sustainability is given absolute priority not only in the operation but also in the construction itself.
The essence of the HUNGARIAN NEST+ project, which debuted at Solar Decathlon 2019, combining natural renewable energies and innovative engineering solutions, was to design a low-budget passive building renovation formulated by energy-efficient integration of national elements and a new energy-plus building with complementary technological know-how.
The Hungarian team has already begun preparations for the Solar Decathlon in Wuppertal, postponed to 2022 due to Covid, where they want to use their previous experience in a new project. This time, the focus is on making the urban environment healthier by designing a house for young graduates staying in Pécs to live in and run their own business. According to the project's designers, the city's economy should rely more heavily on the university than it does at present, so that the industrial world can benefit from the sophisticated resources that are already present in Pécs' cultural life. The plan envisages a building whose inner core can be transformed into a green environment, not only supporting economic livelihoods but also providing an eco-friendly healthy living space for young people.
Because the researchers found that the biggest disadvantage of society today is isolation, the apartment building they envisioned includes community space and work space in addition to residential floors. And from an ecological point of view, it is an extra-energy house with zero or negative emissions. The team has set itself a very significant challenge: to try to achieve a situation where this applies not just to the operation of the building, but to the whole life cycle, which includes the construction. That is, to source building materials in a sustainable way, to carry out the construction and then the operation, the refurbishment, and possibly the recycling - something that perhaps no one has yet managed to do. "Research shows that in our inner cities there is a high level of emissions from inefficient heating and car traffic, but little green space to compensate. Therefore, with the building we are designing, we want to give a lung of greenery to the inner city.
In addition, their house can be used to connect members of a fragmented society, acting as a prosthetic link between isolated people. It is hoped that the preparations for the competition will lead to a wealth of know-how and innovative patents that can later be put to industrial use. This is also one of our goals", summarizes the mission of the project, the professional lead pair of the student team of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology of the UP, Dr. Tamás Kondor and Dr. Balázs Kósa, professors of architecture.
