ELEMENT Design Development: Battery Box

As seen in the Floor Plan seen in the “ELEMENT Design Development: Layout” the Battery Box was originally placed on the North Façade in front of the Bathroom. In one of the first design charrettes it was thought that the battery box could be made into a display. The battery box was then designed to attached to the North Façade and placed along the tour path so that before patrons entered the house the could see the “guts” of the building. The battery box was imagined as a mostly glass frame structure which housed the batteries and a computer monitoring system which could display the total output from the solar panels as well as the total energy consumption of the building. However, mechanical engineers where worried about the aesthetic appeal of the battery box saying that the batteries themselves where not much to look at and the computer system would be most likely not be able to be displayed at all. The Battery Box was further complicated after the mechanical engineers meet with the event organizers in Washington DC. It was recommended that the number of batteries be drastically reduced and detached from the structure entirely. Taking their recommendations into consideration, the battery box was detached from the house and moved into a separate structure to the east of the house.

This move caused several other small changes in the overall layout of the house. In particular, the inverter closet (once on display on the North Façade) was moved next to the bathroom on the East Façade. This move caused the size of the bathroom to shrink by roughly 2 ½ feet causing the bathroom to know longer be accessible (aka meeting ADA requirements). In terms of program requirements for the competition, this reduction is not a problem because the bathroom is not in the general tour path. However, the fact that the bathroom is no longer accessible may hurt the overall marketability of the house.

Final Floor Plan