A new book that chronicles the development of an award-winning solar home that competed in the 2009 Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C., has been released by University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press.
“Generating Hope: Stories of the BeauSoleil Louisiana Solar Home” will be available for purchase during Festivals Acadiens et Creoles, which will be held at Girard Park Friday through Sunday.
Signed copies will be available from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Thursday through Sunday, at the BeauSoleil Home, 140 Girard Park Circle.
On Friday, at 2 p.m., Michael Doucet, founder of the Grammy Award-winning Cajun band BeauSoleil will give a special performance in celebration of the book’s release and the fifth anniversary of the decathlon.
The book is written by W. Geoff Gjertson, an architecture professor at UL Lafayette, and Dege Legg, a writer and Grammy-nominated musician. Gjertsen was faculty advisor for the BeauSoleil Home, which won first place in Market Viability and captured the People’s Choice award in the decathlon.
Over 200 UL Lafayette students and a handful of University professors worked on the project, along with construction specialists.
“Although it was created for the Solar Decathlon, it was never simply about winning a competition. The home embodies the hearts, souls, ingenuity, way of life, and spirit of the Cajun and Creole people of South Louisiana,” Gjertson writes in the book’s introduction. “The BeauSoleil Home captures the past and present. And it represents a possible future direction for energy-efficient and hurricane-resistant housing on the Gulf Coast.”
The book includes interviews with the team that designed and built the home and those who supported it.
“Generating Hope: Stories of the BeauSoleil Louisiana Solar Home” features over 180 photographs that illustrate the building’s technical innovations, as well as sidebars that provide a guide to implementing solar and sustainable practices.