Solar Decathlon Kitchen

This image is the final concept proposed by the Industrial Design arm of the Solar Decathlon Team. Given an area only 12’ x 6’ to work with, we were able to squeeze in a fully functional kitchen.

Does the average American want an 800 square foot home? What if it was powered exclusively by solar energy? This is the issue that Carnegie Mellon faced in Solar Decathlon, a competition sponsored by the Department of Energy. This project was my first true interdisciplinary team, comprised of designers, architects, engineers and business students. Our goal was to not only design a house that will win the competition based on functionality, but also be successful in bringing alternative energy to the attention of the average person.

With a space so small, we had to maximize the usefulness of every inch. This helped us realize that a smaller space increases kitchen efficiency and we eliminated aspects of a traditional kitchen workflow that got in the way. We also explored non-traditional sizes of drawers and interesting hinges. This was also a materials project. We sought to include environmentally sustainable materials that still have the quality expected from a professional-grade kitchen.

As the kitchen team lead, I was responsible for organizing the team and assigning tasks. More importantly, I met often with the Solar Decathlon project managers, making sure our ideas were carried forward. It was also my responsibility to present our proposal 3 times over the course of the semester to the full team of 50 people. I learned a great deal about managing the politics of an interdisciplinary project.

In order to test our interaction concepts, the kitchen team built a full-scale foam core model of our proposal. This informed our choices about form and scale, and validated our usability reasearch.