Architecture is the avenue where form, function, creativity, and standards intersect, yielding a plan and design for something that greatly impacts people: a building. The true beauty of a building is revealed in how it serves people. These are the places in which we live, learn, work, play, dream, worship, and more. And these are the places that build communities.

Keeping people at the forefront when planning and designing structures is second nature to Ball State students at the University’s R. Wayne Estopinal College of Architecture and Planning (CAP). The planning and design of an affordable, net-zero energy duplex home—which will house two families in the Near Eastside neighborhood of Westminster/St. Philip Neri in Indianapolis—is an example of those efforts.

CAP students’ work on the duplex, dubbed the “Alley House,” is a project for the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon® 2023 Build Challenge, an international competition. A multi-disciplinary group of CAP students and faculty has been working since the Fall 2021 semester on this five-semester-long project for the Solar Decathlon.