gt.5, a team of students from the School of Architecture won the design solution category and Construction Documents Jury Award in the inaugural Department of Energy (DOE) Challenge Home Student Design Competition.   

 The team, made up of architecture master’s students Sandeep Ahuja, Patrick Chopson, Yiyuan Jia, Paul Szymkiewicz, and Yijia Wang, designed Prototype 5 in the High Performance Building Lab under the guidance of Professor Godfried Augenbroe. With a clear mandate to show tightly integrated design, simulation, optimization and building science, the team produced a highly modern, performance-based design of a zero energy home.

“Congratulations to team gt.5 for this accomplishment,” said Augenbroe. “Prototype 5 demonstrates Georgia Tech's leadership in guiding advanced design solutions through building science and computation.

Twenty-eight university teams from the U.S. and Canada competed in this first annual competition to develop cost-effective zero energy ready homes for mainstream builders. In late April the teams presented their innovative designs aimed to transform housing in America to a panel of national experts and researchers in high performance building. These innovations will be incorporated into the Department of Energy and National Renewable Energy Lab’s effort to fight climate change.

For more information on the competition and to see a complete list of winners, visit www.homeinnovation.com/DOEChallengeHomeStudentDesignCompetition.