Author(s)

V. H. Ardila, L. F. Lalinde Castrillón, M. Rodriguez Velazquez, A. Villa Ortega

Abstract

The Solar Decathlon is the international competition of construction of sustainable housing most important in the world. It convokes universities from many countries to present models of housing, which are very efficient with water, energy and other resources.

This competition was created by the US Department of Energy and has been taking place for 14 years in different cities around the world. This year, the event was carried out for the first time in Latin America, specifically in Cali, Colombia.

In this version, new components and conditions to the housing design appear; they must be consequent to the real life in the Latin America tropical context.

The UPB (Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana) decided to conform an interdisciplinary team in order to participate in SSLC 2015. With students and teachers from 8 different faculties, the project was developed in agreement with competition rules, academic requirements for students and the guidelines of sustainable design.

The results that have been obtained until now are very positive in several aspects:

• The object of the contest, what is the design of a sustainable housing model (which will be developed in a future document)

• The academic and educational experience through the interdisciplinary and collaborative work.

In this text, we will focus on the matter of educational experience. We understand this opportunity is a pilot project. This project has allowed us, students and teachers, to understand that to obtain a project which is really sustainable, it is necessary to open our minds and comprehend the reality in a more holistic and integrated manner.

Keywords

education, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, experimental workshop, job training, teamwork, cooperation