NARRATOR: Imagine waking on a cold winter morning to the aroma of fresh coffee. The sun rises, and as the south wall collects heat from the increasing sun light, a large insulation panel slides away from the bedroom window. The concrete floor is warm.

The air is still and quiet. Your favorite morning music begins to play lightly as you eat your breakfast. And as you drive away, your house automatically locks. Thermostats reduce. Insulation panels close. Music shuts off. And the house hibernates until you return from work.

Virginia Tech's LUMENHAUS is not just a house imagined for the future. It is a working prototype that utilizes computer technology, architectural design, and energy efficiency in an integrated way that enriches daily life.

Robert Dunay, Faculty Advisor: We've chosen a very provocative position. We've decided to make a solar house that's a pavilion. At the same time, our concept of responsive architecture will allow the house to adapt to the different conditions.

Joseph Wheeler, Faculty Advisor: The idea of responsive architecture is – can a house be 100 percent energy efficient with the use of a computer, with the use of technology – while at the same time, not sacrifice comfort and quality of living for that user.

NARRATOR: The house can easily open to the outside with natural cross ventilation. Through a system of low energy, motor driven and computer activated panels, the pavilion state can be effortlessly converted to a well insulated and well shaded energy efficient space.

John Black, Fifth year architecture student: One aspect of sustainability in our house is that it's very energy efficient. We have the ability to open and close a lot of our openings. They are operable to allow for user comforts and to adapt to the changing environment.

NARRATOR: Insulating walls made of poly carbonate panels and aero-gel move across the two glass facades. A system of shade panels, designed like shutters, lets sunlight in during different seasons but adds privacy to different spaces.

Joseph Wheeler, Faculty adviser: The outer layer is a sun shade which opens and closes using servo motors. The second panel is an insulation panel that allows us to have this open pavilion when the weather is good, because obviously when the weather is good we want to take advantage of good weather – that's the most energy efficient you can be is to stop using your systems when you don't need them.

NARRATOR: A complex building control system utilizing an easy to use iPhone application allows control of the house from wherever you are.

Joseph Wheeler, Faculty adviser: One of the great things about the iPhone is there will be one application that's titled energy use. It will have a little meter with a dial rotating. If you click on that meter, it will show you every device in your house that's using energy and it will actually give you control to toggle on and off those devices. Giving the public a device that shows them where they're using energy we see as a real positive. We think that that will affect how one uses energy.

NARRATOR: Simply click on your house icon – and choose one of the many house control options for temperature, shading, insulation, and even your lighting and appliances to optimize and balance energy efficiency with personalized living requirements.

John Black, Fifth year architecture student: The concept of this house is responsive architecture. And that is in one part because of it's response to the environment. We have a weather station on this house that's connected to a computer, which is connected to sensors, and the weather station tells the computer the weather conditions outside the house.

Robert Dunay, Faculty Advisor: This house is designed to respond to two really significant demands. One is the demands from external conditions that deal with weather and different climate so the computer will sense what systems it needs to deploy to optimize the energy use and also maximize the comfort for the users. At the same time there is a strategy by which the individual can control the house and overrule the computer.

NARRATOR: The house converts energy from the sun to generate electricity through solar panels on the roof that adjust during the seasons.

Danny Slover, Fourth year electrical engineering student: A regular solar panel has an opaque background so the sunlight does not travel through it. The Sanyo Double Hit has a glass background so what sun doesn't get absorbed going through the first time, will reflect back and hit the back side of the wafer causing another change in charge and more current to flow and create more power.

Robert Dunay, Faculty Advisor: There are two heat pumps in the house – a water-to-water heat pump and a water-to- air heat pump. They are both fed by a geothermal system – which gives us added temperature control and added temperature energy boost for the systems.

John Black, Fifth year architecture student: The geothermal system uses the earth as heat sink basically. In a typical situation, you would have pipes that are sent into the ground either vertically or horizontally laid in the ground, and it uses the temperature of the earth to keep those pipes at a median temperature.

Robert Dunay, Faculty Advisor: The water to water heat pump heats the radiant floor and the domestic water. The radiant floor is the best kind of heat you can have because the air temperature can be kept lower than normal ambient temperature. There's no moving air so the atmosphere seems much more comfortable and also it's completely quiet so there's no sound in the air system.

John Black, Fifth year architecture student: Through responsive architecture, our house is able to do many tasks – operate insulation panels, operate sun shading screens, operate photovoltaic panels on the roof, operate the music that plays within the house, the lighting that's in the house, and curtains that are in the house. All this can be controlled by the user.

Joseph Wheeler, Faculty adviser: Architecture of small space is a critical aspect to designing this house.

Casey Reeve, Third year industrial design student: The interior is bookended by two cores which are all wood, and in the center there's a bathroom core which is all wood as well.

Joseph Wheeler, Faculty adviser:We have a bed in the bedroom that can fold up like a Murphy bed to allow a different use for that bedroom at different times. The home office is made up of two nesting tables. These tables can be relocated into a different area of the house for different functions when the office is not being used. The kitchen has a sliding cabinet that conceals the kitchen when the kitchen is not being used but allows additional work space when the kitchen is utilized.

Casey Reeve, Third year industrial design student: It can also be pushed out towards the edge of the house and used as a bar to serve outdoor food because the whole dinning room set-up can all be moved outside for outside dinning and it will serve as a serving platform for those meals.

Lindsey Jones, Fourth year architecture student: We have closets in the bedroom that open to close off the bedroom if you want your private space and when the closet doors open there's a flat screen television behind it. So if you are here in your bedroom watching television and you have guests in the living room, you can close that off and still be able to maintain a private space.

Joseph Wheeler, Faculty adviser: You know it's a very tough task to transport an entire house and rebuild it in a matter of three or four days.

NARRATOR: An innovative transportation system allows the house to be transported easily with very little on site construction or assembly.

Corey McCalla:, Fourth year architecture student: The entire house is built as a transportable unit. There's no need for a flatbed.

Joseph Wheeler, Faculty adviser: We then have removable components on the front and the back. The bogy which is the wheel assembly on the back and gooseneck which is also a removable component on the front that will allow us to transport the house and to easily release these two elements leaving the house as a house and not as a trailer or mobile home with the wheels left behind.

Robert Dunay, Faculty Advisor: We have taken a very provocative stance. This house is a pavilion; therefore, it's completely open and for the six months of the year where the house can be open it expands out to the outer reaches of the decks – therefore, making a seamless boundary between inside and outside. Thus the house is a lot bigger than its small 800 foot footprint. In that regard, I think it will offer a better quality of life because it will be more energy sustaining. It will be more economical, but it will offer a complete richness of daily activity that any house does on the market today.

NARRATOR: Working closely with the architecture, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering students and faculty, Virginia Tech has used the concept of responsive architecture to create a house that can operate at an optimal energy efficiency 24 hours a day without compromising the comfort and beauty of a modern architectural home.

The Virginia Tech LUMENHAUS: Bringing the future to life.