New Delhi, May 30: It is a matter of pride for Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) that students from the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture & Ekistics have won the national level Solar Decathlon India (SDI) competition under the educational building division. The SDI Finals 2024 were held on May 17 – 19 at the prestigious Infosys, Mysuru campus; the finalist teams of Solar Decathlon India 2023-24 Challenge presented their state-of-the-art net-zero and climate-resilient designs to the Division Jury, composed of experts from the industry. The teams presented their solutions with passive and active strategies to meet the cooling demand and proposed interesting innovations to achieve efficiency.
Solar Decathlon India is the world's largest net-zero building challenge. It is a challenge among postgraduate and undergraduate students from Indian institutions to learn and design net-zero-energy-water, affordable and resilient design solutions for real building projects to combat Climate Change by partnering with developers, clients, or other real estate proponents. Around 200 colleges from all over India participated in the competition. Out of the total 175 teams, there were 49 teams contesting in the educational building division of which Team NOVA 2.0 was the final winner.
Two teams from the Department of Architecture were able to reach the finals of which Team NOVA 2.0 won in the Educational building category. The team comprised 8 members from B.Arch program and 2 members from B.Tech (Civil Engg). The team worked on a project by Lodha group for a site in Pune. The team was mentored by Prof. Hina Zia and comprised of Saleha Naz, Isra Aiman, Mohd Ali Ovais, Maaz Khan, Garvit Sachdeva, Zainab Sania, Mushthaque Ahamed and Dauha Faridi from the Department of Architecture. Solar Decathlon India is conducted by the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) and the Alliance for an Energy Efficiency Economy (AEEE) under the aegis of the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF).