The Illini were the sleeper team this year, bringing an unassuming barn-like structure that would make expat Champaign/Urbanna grads feel right at home. Recycled barn siding formed a simple exterior that hid a well-designed home that took 1st place in Appliances, Hot Water and Home Entertainment, and narrowly lost to Germany in the all-important Net Metering contest. Germany (pictured at right) slipped by Illinois by winning the Net Metering contest by 12 points, just enough to move into the winner's circle by 11 points. How did our Hessian friends do so well in power production? Simple. They covered the entire skin of their building in solar panels, a slightly understated techno look that would be very popular in Europe, and a hugely powerful source of electricity.
California, which held first place until the last days, had a great house but maybe the Karma got 'em. They made multiple claims, all bogus, they were the only undergraduate team on the Mall. CNN bought that nonsense without checking, and to our knowledge Cali still makes that claim on their website. We'll quote a recent S&T grad who works in the Cali desert (and who just happens to be from Illinois) who wrote last week that:
"I now live and work with these Californians, and they just don't seem to grasp that they aren't the best at everything. It just takes being beaten by "those dumb old country folks" from the Midwest for them to learn who the real engineers are. Keep it up, Solar House. I'll make sure to clear up the confusion next time I run into a Santa Clara grad at the office ;)"
Show-Me Solar hung in there for a respectable 11th place, right behind Ohio State and two slots above powerful Virginia Tech. The team is understandably disappointed in their engineering and architecture scores, but as one participant asked rhetorically "those architecture comments were like reading ones from another house & we can't appeal a subjective contest. ugh!!!"
In the judges' defense you have to keep in mind that this biannual event comes together with hundreds of staffers in roles outside of their normal jobs. The judges are expected to have the wisdom of Solomon and the data retention of an Excel spreadsheet, but YOU try walking through twenty innovative homes and keeping straight which feature went with which house! Obviously errors are going to be made, especially in the subjective events. Rumors are even swirling that officials were debating changes in this year's contest as late as last night.
Here's a quick salute to Illinois, whose more traditional style home (below) is an indication of how much the 2009's Decathlon entries actually looked like homes compared to '07, when to this writer's eyes, there were an awful lot of "bank branch" buildings out there.
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