Pre-empting their visit to see the Solar Decathlon in Washington last Saturday, the Juniors of the Undergraduate Architecture program held a small competition of their own beforehand. As part of their Passive Housing-themed studio as well as their Architecture and Energy class, the challenge was to see which team could achieve the highest temperature inside a glass box, with only a single light bulb as the heat source and a very limited number of additional materials.

There was a catch, however. Once the light bulb was turned off, the temperature kept being recorded and the real ‘passive’ properties of the glass boxes were put to test… and so were a lot of preconceptions. This workshop let the students put some of the very abstract ideas behind passive construction into practice.