This Award-Winning House Gives Back—and It’s Almost Seaworthy

In 2002, when the U.S. Department of Energy held the first Solar Decathlon—a competition for the most energy-efficient homes in the world—on the National Mall in Washington, DC, most of the houses were, to put it charitably, on the humble side. But there was no shortage of innovation. There was a ranch-type building with prism skylights to maximize daylight and a cabinlike model with a portable solar electricity source.

Every two years since the second event in 2005, the challenge has been for colleges to design, build, and operate the highest-performing homes. And in contrast to those earlier, defiantly rustic abodes, they’re now uniformly high-design. As the rules state, the homes need to be “cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive.”

On Saturday the 2015 winner was announced, and it surely hit that trifecta. The Stevens Institute of Technology crafted the Sure House, “which both reduces its energy use and adapts to the realities of a changing, more extreme climate.”

That new climate includes increasingly violent weather, from East Coast hurricanes to the expected onslaught of El Niño in the West, so this modern beach cottage is storm- and flood-resilient, and built above FEMA’s designated Base Flood Elevation. Heck, since it’s made from “fiber-composite materials repurposed from the boat building industry,” it’s practically seaworthy. Practically.

It’s solar-powered, of course, and, in addition to using 90% less energy than most homes, is designed to become an emergency power hub for its neighbors. The house actually makes you a good Samaritan.

How likely are you to see the Sure House and its runners-up in your own neighborhood? Well, if past decathlons are any indication, it won’t be filling up beachfronts anytime soon.

Some of the past decathlon homes have been disassembled, or stand on the college campuses that birthed them as a testament to the students’ acumen and the possibility of brighter, greener futures. A few have become private residences. Most have become inspiration for architects and builders, and, if you want to peruse this year’s other entrants, they might inspire you, too.

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