Chalmers Architecture and Civil Engineering (ACE) has been selected to participate in the Solar Decathlon Competition Europe in Wuppertal, Germany in June 2022. Chalmers and Team Sweden’s C-HIVE project aims at designing, constructing, and operating a lightweight solar powered rooftop living unit. The C-Hive project is deploying additive manufacturing in cellulose-based material.
Sweden has a large need for the development of additional living space and is projected to need 88,000 new dwellings per year till at least 2025 (Boverket, 2016). Research has shown that the environmental impact of a new build apartment is significantly higher than the renovation and/or (vertical) densification of the existing building stock.
The C-Hive solution contributes to several Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 12 Sustainable Consumption and Production (resource consumption reduction per capita and square meter living space), Goal 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (prefabricated light-weight system) and Goals 13 Climate Action (renewable and low carbon construction solution).
Team Sweden aims to realize the world’s first full-scale and fully functional positive footprint house 3D printed in cellulose that can become a testbed and demonstrator forged by a close collaboration between students, teachers, and researchers at Chalmers with industry experts.
C-Hive aims at developing new industrialized construction technologies for upgrading and extending existing building stock with the addition of lightweight roof extensions made of Cellulose based materials which are a waste product of Swedish forestry.
To facilitate for the Solar Decathlon project, this project worked on a number of research applications, developed a sponsorship package and a project prototype. This resulted in a successful in an application for FORMAS Smart Built Environment.
Project partners: Chalmers and City of Gothenburg
Financier: Urban Futures via Chalmers seed-money call
Duration: 2020
Contact person: Jonas Lundberg, lecturer, Chalmers Architecture and Civil Engineering, jonas.lundberg@chalmers.se
