The students of a TU Delft sustainable energy course, now running in its third year, used to call Llowlab, a small island within the festival grounds of the Lowlands music festival, home.
Delen
Their ideas outgrew the little island that nurtured their first two years of being. Last year, they developed so many ideas that they built their own island extension, which they called the Bamboo Pavilion.
There were consequences to their outgrowth. The Netherland’s largest festival organizer, Mojo, who also organizes Lowlands, asked them to move out. “This will not mean that we will not produce a ‘llowlablikething’ [next year],” Gertjan de Werk, the course’s instructor, told me when he got the news in 2012.
So he and his students decided to move up. Rebranded as Team D-Exto, they have a new Facebook pageand a new philosophy. Instead of showing up at the same festival every year, they are now a traveling show.
Over the winter, the students rebuilt their bamboo pavilion, where it now stands at the Faculty of Architecture. Its structure opens and closes, floats on water, stands on land and minimizes its energy use.
This past spring and summer, they brought their pavilion and projects to Delft’s Zomerfestivaland the Indian Summer Festival. They spent some time at TU Delft’s Summer Village, and the team has one more stop at Mysteryland. Although Lowlands is one of the bigger-ticket music festivals in the Netherlands, it has not deterred Team D-Exto from finding a market.
Apparently, their brand of showcasing new green technology on the road has whetted the appetite of more festivals than they could accommodate. “Unfortunately we could not go to the other festivals that wanted us,” said de Werk, hinting that the smaller ones fell lower on their priority list than the bigger ones.
Exhibiting new ideas from TU Delft at these festivals improves the university’s public reputation. “If the innovations that are thought of and built are successful, they could not only be part of a transition towards a more sustainable society, they will also be present at several festivals to show how the university will contribute to solving society’s problems,” de Werk wrote in an email.
The most successful project ever from the course was RevoltHouse, which attracted funding at the first exhibit that TU Delft presented at the Lowlands festival in 2011.
The course is running again this year. Honors bachelor’s and all master’s students are open to take the course.
View a slideshow of photos about the course.
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