Illinois Solar Decathlon
UIUC’s Illinois Solar Decathlon Design Team are finalists! Over the past school year, the Design Team has worked numerous hours to bring to life a project they call IDEALS, a 165,000 sq. ft. K–8th grade educational institution standing to promote innovation, design, engineering, arts, learning, and sustainability in its design. It is a state-of-the-art, progressive, innovative, pedagogically radical, and ultra-sustainable K–8 school targeted at Chicago’s under-served, low-income, disproportionately BIPOC communities. The plan is to replace two massive unshaded parking lots at the northwest corner of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s campus that is already slated for potential new educational development in their 2024 master plan. These lots have done more harm than good, because they are under-utilized, a massive contributor to the heat-island effect, and displaced many residents when they were first constructed. Our design is here to rewrite it all.
IDEALS offers a diverse range of spaces tailored to accommodate students across all K–8 levels. Striking a delicate balance between privacy and collaboration, each floor is curated to embrace distinct academic chapters. While the first and third floors host programs geared towards our youngest and oldest learners, the second floor serves as a middle ground of communal areas, such as a library and computer lab, intended for universal use. Our spaces are designed to exceed ADA requirements and comply with Subdivision 303 of the Chicago Education Building Code, which entails various features facilitating and securing emergency exits. Overall, our 100% student-led team wanted to focus specifically on providing environmental justice, economic justice, and academic enrichment in our design. This led to other aspects of our design to include the use of a geothermal system, purple roof, algae facade, photovoltaic windows, and kinetic floor tiles to help produce sustainable energy. From there, electric buses and technology like cutting-edge SolaTube Skylights will be utilized to expend the energy created in an efficient manner. Then lastly, collaboration with multiple educational resources has allowed us to tailor programs to focus on goals such as developing the confidence and pride for a student’s identity to fostering social mobility. At the end of the day, our idea is to champion the effect early intervention has in education, especially for the under-served populations in Chicago, so that children can have a better chance unlocking and utilizing the opportunities Chicago Public Schools high schools and higher education may present to them in the future.
The team went to Colorado to present their final design in late April at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory where they met the many other finalist schools who also participated.