A team of students in Morocco have successfully developed an environmentally sustainable home made almost exclusively from hemp and solar panels.
The building was erected as an entry into the SUNIMPLANT project’s ‘Solar Decathlon’, a competition organized by the United States Department of Energy and Morocco’s Centre de recherche en Energie solaire et Energies nouvelles to encourage construction of solar-powered buildings.
This design is unique and was built from only locally sourced hemp, vegetable-based bio-resins, and other non-synthetic materials found in the region.
“This ‘spaceship’ is advanced in time and reflects a turn not only in North Africa but in hemp construction, which doesn’t have comparable prototypes anywhere in the world.” — Monika Brümmer, German Architect and Project Leader
Monika is also the co-founder of Adrar Nouh, a Spain-based NGO with a focus on using hemp to build environmentally sustainable homes in Morocco’s poor and rural High Rif region.
The spherical home spans 90 square meters (approximately 969 square feet) and features 24 photovoltaic solar panels with a total price tag of only $120,000. The structure actually costs less than half of the most expensive entries in the competition.
According to Brümmer, the building could be optimized even further if hemp-clay boards were installed as internal partitioning walls and floors. Although funding restrictions did partially obstruct their original goal, the home features some interesting innovations such as hemp wool-derived panels which protect the underside of the solar panels against extreme weather conditions, an important inclusion for a region which reaches up to 114°F in the shade during August and September.
Via Waking Times
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