What started as a student design for a sustainable building competition soon will be a net-zero-energy home in Atlanta’s historic Vine City neighborhood.
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From left: Jingqi (Kiki) Ruan, Wyatt Williams, and Jackie Zong talk about their plans for the abandoned and crumbling home in Atlanta’s Vine City neighborhood. (Photo: Candler Hobbs)
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Less than seven minutes from Georgia Tech’s campus lies the historic, vibrant neighborhood of Vine City. There, engineering and design students are reinventing what it means to live sustainably — turning a blighted single-family home into a net-zero-energy living experiment.
The group first formed to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy 2024 Solar Decathlon Design Challenge, where students design buildings capable of producing at least as much energy as they consume. Using reclaimed materials alongside energy efficient systems, including a 1-ton air-source heat pump and a rooftop solar system, the team’s design earned first place in the single-family home division.
From left: Georgia Tech team members Jackie Zong, Anushka Kibria, Arya Desai, Wyatt Williams, and Rachel Witherspoon pose with their award at the Solar Decathlon Design Challenge. (Courtesy: Solar Decathlon Design Team)
But they didn’t want to stop there. The group was eager to transform its ideas into something practical and applicable in the real world.
“Our aim was not just to win a competition but to ignite a sustainable transformation in Vine City,” said Arya Desai, a fourth-year civil engineering student. “By integrating cutting-edge, eco-friendly designs into this historic neighborhood, we’re setting a precedent for what the future of urban living can and should look like.”
The Georgia Tech team connected with the Westside Future Fund (WFF), a nonprofit organization committed to revitalizing Atlanta’s historic westside neighborhoods, to bring their sustainable house design to life. The organization has worked with Georgia Tech students and professors over the years.
“We’ve always tried to bring as much real-world experience to the Tech projects that we collaborate on. It’s one thing to have an idea and the technical know-how to design something, but making it a practical, affordable reality isn’t always so easy,” said Lee Harrop, WFF’s vice president of real estate development. “WFF is proud to partner with the Tech team to make this house a reality.”
The collaboration isn’t starting from scratch: The group’s competition design was based on an actual site owned by WFF. Now, the organization will provide the property and some baseline funding to construct a house based on the students’ ideas. The students are raising additional money to implement the green technologies they incorporated in the design to reach net-zero goals.
“For a home to be truly affordable, it needs to have reasonable utility costs. Many older homes in Atlanta have inadequate insulation and inefficient appliances, for example,” Harrop said. “We view this as an opportunity to see how we can push the envelope in terms of building technology on this and future homes.”
Why Vine City?
The team was drawn to Vine City because of its significant role in Atlanta’s history and the opportunity to reimagine what could be possible for the community.
Martin Luther King Jr. and others lived in the neighborhood as they led the civil rights movement. However, Vine City residents have confronted significant challenges as decades of underinvestment resulted in vacant houses, underperforming schools, and few resources. In recent years, an influx of interest — and money — in the area have raised fears of gentrification as long-time residents risk being pushed out of their homes and the city.
“Vine City is a neighborhood that’s historically disadvantaged. People there have been faced with energy burden, housing costs, and gentrification for years,” said Jackie Zong, a fourth-year civil engineering student.
“It’s really sad to see what’s happening to the neighborhood today; many people have had to leave their homes because they can’t afford their energy bills. So that’s why we decided to partner with Westside Future Fund and to work on this project in Vine City.”
According to WFF data, approximately half of the residents in Vine City and the nearby English Avenue neighborhood are burdened by housing costs, spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Harrop said keeping energy costs down is a key factor in making homeownership more affordable for legacy residents. That’s why a near net-zero-energy home holds such promise for the area.
Still, the Georgia Tech team didn’t want to create a showcase house; instead, they aim to build something that genuinely integrates with the neighborhood. They’ve held several community events to share their plans and gauge the community’s perception.
They did encounter initial skepticism. Some community members thought the new house would lead to increased gentrification rather than help residents stay in the neighborhood.
A rendering of the team’s net-zero energy home design. (Courtesy: Solar Decathlon Design Team)
By integrating cutting-edge, eco-friendly designs into this historic neighborhood, we’re setting a precedent for what the future of urban living can and should look like.
ARYA DESAI
“One resident thought that this would be another Airbnb sort of development,” Zong said, referring to the short-term rental website. “We explained to her that we’re building this house for legacy residents from the neighborhood. That made residents happy and much more supportive. There are other projects building residences that ultimately are posted on Airbnb and other rental websites, and it’s really tearing the community apart.”
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Jackie Zong, Rachel Witherspoon, and Jingqi (Kiki) Ruan have used software modeling tools to optimize their design for the house. (Photo: Candler Hobbs)
Wyatt Williams (pointing), Arjun Thangaraj Ramshankar, and Rachel Witherspoon at the site of the net-zero energy home they will construct. (Photo: Candler Hobbs)
What Near Net-Zero Looks Like
Software modeling tools allowed the students to optimize their design based on energy performance simulations, ensuring the group’s orientation, material selection, and system choices all contribute to the house’s energy efficiency without significantly increasing upfront costs.
The team will incorporate an air-tight building envelope, continuous insulation, and high-performance windows — energy-conserving measures often lacking in older homes like those in Vine City. They’ll use an efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system, including an air-source heat pump and an energy recovery ventilator to manage heating and cooling with reduced energy usage.
The team also will install a solar panel system capable of generating more than 7 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, enough renewable power to meet the house’s energy needs. Excess energy will be channeled back to the electric grid, generating credits that will reduce the power bill.
With assistance from the Lifecycle Building Center — a nonprofit specializing in reclaiming materials for sustainable and affordable construction — the group will acquire reusable building materials, greatly reducing the carbon footprint of construction.
“We hope our project can become a guideline for all future developments in the area — to promote sustainability but also make sure homes remain affordable,” Desai said. “Ultimately, we want to keep the residents in the neighborhood for a longer time with better living conditions.”
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Helluva Engineer
This story originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Helluva Engineer magazine.
In a world with more people, more energy needs, and more waste than ever, Georgia Tech engineers are hard at work developing the tools and technology for everyone to thrive. We’re diverting trash from landfills and taming plastic pollution (while finding alternatives to plastic in the first place). We're reducing the environmental impact of agriculture and finding new ways to fertilize the fields growing food for a growing world. And engineers are powering up the batteries, fuels, and renewable sources to meet surging energy demand. The future is coming; we're making it more sustainable.