What is the Ice Box Challenge?
It is a fun and interactive public installation and contest demonstrating the advantages of high performance buildings such as Passive House buildings. Four boxes are filled with an equal amount of ice and displayed for public viewing on the SPA campus in Delhi for 9 days. Two boxes will be constructed according to standard current building practice (with a variation in material thickness), the third one will be built to Ec0-Niwas Samhita (ENS) standard while the fourth one will be built to the international Passive House Standard, a highly energy-efficient building performance standard. Each box is filled with an equal amount of ice at the beginning of the experiment, and after 9 days the amount of ice left in each box will be measured, with the level of ice remaining used to demonstrate how well each ice box passively kept out the heat.
Better building design can help us reduce our carbon pollution without greatly changing our behaviour. Buildings that prioritise efficiency first are comfortable and healthy.
This is the First-Ever Indian designed-build Ice Box Structure. The boxes will form a public installation, on display from March 1-10, 2024, in New Delhi, India.
What’s on at the event?
Visitors can learn how high performance buildings offer a high level of comfort, can help meet climate protection goals, and make significant energy savings. Please join us at SPA to view the boxes and network with the projects participants, including the members of the Ice Box Challenge Consortium, the design team, SPA students and teachers. Check out high-performance building industry sponsors, attend the opening and closing ceremonies – and enter the contest with your best guess of how much ice will remain in each box after 9 days. We hope to see you there!