DU Partners With UC Berkeley for International Competition

For about two dozen students in DU’s Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management, the summer will be spent directly applying what they have learned in the classroom in an unusual way. They will endure the hot weather as they construct a home that will compete in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon competition.

“Being able to take our knowledge from the classroom and come out and actually build something feasible and physical, I think that’s where we actually connect the dots,” says Jack Ross, a graduate student in the Burns School. “It’s one thing to read it in a book, but to actually apply it on a job site that’s a school-sponsored project, it really takes the learning experience to the next level.”

Construction of the 800-square-foot house, which also includes an 800-square-foot deck, started earlier this month in a parking lot on the University of Denver campus. However, the design of the home started about two years ago on the University of California at Berkeley campus.

“We are really good at engineering a design, at coming up with innovative ideas. But DU has a special aspect of construction management experience that we don’t have at our school,” says Ruth McGee, a civil engineering student at UC Berkeley. “I think bringing in DU has been the best thing we have done.”

A team of students from UC Berkeley was accepted into the competition in 2015. They then worked with other students, faculty, professionals and the city of Richmond, Calif. — where the house will eventually end up — on the structure’s concept. While the students are constructing only a one-floor single-family home, it is designed to have two more homes stacked on top of it. The house also features moveable walls, so the unit can transform from a one-bedroom to a two-bedroom unit, depending on the needs of the occupants.