From 2000-02, the University of Virginia School of Architecture and the School of Engineering and Applied Science participated in the first Solar Decathlon competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Fourteen university teams designed and built home powered entirely by the sun, and set them up on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The UVA named their house the Trojan Goat — a highly adaptive and resourceful building that transformed itself as it entered Washington D.C. The project changed the teaching and research trajectories of faculty advisors John Quale and Paxton Marshall, who went on to establish the ecoMOD Project. ecoMOD responds to many of the same issues, but does so with the constrained budgets of affordable housing organizations.
The UVA team won 1st Place in the Architecture event (by judges that included Glenn Murcutt) and 2nd Place overall. The team also tied for 1st Place in the Energy Balance category, and received several other awards.