Ecological and Self-Sustaining Cabin

In times of climate change and a progressively increasing world population, terms like livability, sustainability and living space are more important than ever before. Therefore, a group of students from “University of Science Upper Austria” created an ecological cabin which is entirely self-sustaining and regionally produced. In addition to that, the modular construction enables cost-effective manufacturing, customizable layouts and easy transportation. The ecological and self-sustaining cabin combines innovative and longstanding building technologies to ensure physical and mental wellbeing. In order to meet these fundamental prerequisites, the project was divided into four significant parts called Construction & Materials, Electrical Energy System, Water Supply and Ventilation Technology. For demonstration purposes, the students decided to build a model of the cabin (see Figure 1) that represents technologies of the topics mentioned above. Additionally, the project team created a three-dimensional visualization of the cabin by using the architecture software ArchiCAD® (see Figure 2). The basic material of the construction is spruce wood, because it’s sustainable, regionally to get and unrivaled regarding warmth and comfort. The gross floor area of each module is 15m2 and arbitrarily expandable. The final construction of the cabin in cooperation with a regional carpentry will be one of our future projects.