Over4 - an award-winning idea that can change the image of cities by loft conversion and thermal rehabilitation of old buildings

In May 2019 we were talking about opening of the Over4 house. It was the last test before leaving for Hungary, where the wooden house built according to the principles of a passive cell was to represent Romania at the Solar Decathlon Europe. Solar Decathlon Europe is an international competition that challenges student teams from universities around the world to design and build houses powered exclusively by renewable energy sources. Meanwhile, the group of young enthusiasts who designed and built this project won 3rd place, achieving the best ever ranking for a Romanian team. This is a remarkable achievement considering that these young people come from a country where many people still associate Wooden houses only with cottages or outbuildings in the household. The perception is, however, constantly changing, and houses built on wooden structure we are seeing more and more in Romania.

The Over4 team placed 3rd ahead of teams with budgets several times their own. We experienced the excitement and enjoyed it with them and all those who supported them throughout. After the excitement subsided, we spoke with Daniel Butucel, Sponsorship Manager, one of the six young people who set up the project 2 years ago. We wanted to see what the project looks like from the inside, how they perceive the competition after its completion and how they see the Over4 project in the future.

What does OVER4 mean? How and when did the project start, what prompted it?

Over4 started as our desire to participate in a Solar Decathlon competition. At the beginning we were 6 people - me, Răzvan, Sima, Gicu, Anca, Simona - 3 architects and 3 engineers (Daniel Butucel, Răzvan Butucescu and Cătălin Sima - engineers and Gheorghe Ciobanu, Anca Bodale and Simona Șerban - architecture and design). I experienced EFdeN, but only by rebuilding the house after the 2014 Versailles competition. That's when I got in touch with the competition indirectly. In the summer of 2017 we ended our collaboration with EFdeN and it was then that the 2019 edition of the Solar Decathlon competition was announced, to be held in Hungary. What is special about this edition of the competition is that it puts existing buildings in the foreground and thus tests the participating teams to develop renovation concepts applicable to the existing building stock. We decided to enter and so, by the deadline of 18 October, we managed to write a 20-page proposal containing: architectural concept, innovations, management plan, communication and fundraising strategy. We thought to develop a concept of integrated, holistic renovation of multi-family buildings built during the communist period, the 5-level ones. In short, the P+4 blocks. In October 2017 we sent the proposal together with a non-refundable fee of 850 euros (own money) and we received the answer during Christmas. Romania was going to participate in the "Solar House Olympics" in 2019 in Hungary, together with 15 other teams from 12 countries and 4 continents. That's where our story began.

The name Over4 is very much related to our renovation concept. We propose a vertical extension of the useful space, an attic of the blocks P+4 and that's where the name comes from, that we have Over 4 levels. We established the name in Bucharest, at the University square, after randomly asking people on the street what they thought about our name variants (they were Over4 and 5Fix) and the renovation concept. Over4 won hands down and at the same time we also got a lot of feedback from people living in the P+4 blocks.

What has been the hardest part of all this time: building the team, actually doing it, finding sponsors, physical and moral support?

Each stage was difficult in its own way, because it was the first time I did such a project. We got off to a rocky start, because we had to deal with degrees/licenses (all 6 of us were in our final years) and we didn't even have an office to work in. The first 4 months of the project we spent at home at Razvan's, Anca's or in cafes.

In terms of design, here we had the advantage that we were already quite well prepared from a technical point of view and the big challenge was to match or adapt everything with what we were getting from our partners. There were situations where we had to adapt some of the design solutions because we didn't get what we wanted.

Personally I would say that finding partners was one of the biggest challenges. No one had ever done fundraising before, it was something I learned along the way. We studied the field a bit, looked at previous teams how they did it, set a strategy and got to work. We started our fundraising campaign in September 2017 and have been running ever since, over 80 partners were involved to a greater or lesser extent in the project and thus made it all possible. I thank them in this way too.

Moving on to the practical side (February 2019 we started the construction site in the hall in Targoviste), we started to feel the joy we had been waiting for more than a year. The construction site went very well because we had Gheorghe (Gheorghe Andrei, member of the Over4 team, master student at UTCB), an accomplished and skilled master engineer. The big challenge we had here was to link everything with partnerships, to make sure we got everything on time and that we didn't miss anything. So it's been in close dependence on fundraising.

Managing the team was perhaps the most difficult of all. There were 30 of us constantly on the project, mostly students who had classes and exams running in parallel. We had students from architecture, interior design, urban planning, civil engineering, facilities, management, European relations and polytechnics. Each with different needs and opinions. We were all volunteers, from the one who spent 16 hours on site to the one who was involved 8 hours a week. It has been a great challenge to manage the team, from which we have all learned important lessons.

In conclusion, I would say that the coordination part, of all, has been the most difficult thing by far, because all the activities are interconnected and interdependent. We started as a start-up, from scratch. With absolutely nothing. Only with dreams, hopes and the partial moral support of parents and relatives.

What were you most afraid of in the competition, yourself (possible undetected mistakes), others or something else?

We left Romania with the idea that we will give our best, to leave the competition satisfied with what we have achieved, no matter what place we were going to occupy in the ranking. We knew from the start that we started with the second chance, that we didn't have the budgets of the other teams and that this would be more or less decisive in the competition. That was one of the reasons why we didn't create expectations at the beginning.

We were very nervous about the transport because if something unforeseen happened (delays, accident, damage to the cargo during transport), everything would have fallen off our schedule. Each of the 6 trucks we used to transport the house from Bucharest to Szentendre was awaited and unloaded with bated breath. In the end, everything arrived safely, with very minor exceptions.

We were very strict from the first to the last of the 15 days of assembly and thus prevented any unpleasant surprises. The fact that we built the house first in Bucharest was a great plus for us. In Hungary we only practiced assembling it, more time was invested in finishing and installation. We had one of the best Health&Safety and Site Operations plans and what's more, we had Cosmin Stanciu and Alexandra Ene, Health&Safety Coordinators, who did a great job. As a result, we were the first team in the competition to get all the technical inspections and officially entered the competition. Looking around at the competition, we realised that we were doing very well in some areas and could make up for having a small budget. Since then we have known that we can go toe-to-toe with everyone, even Delft (Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands, which came up with the MOR project, the second place winner, ed.) who had a house worth over 1 million euros. And I did this.

You won 3rd place, the first Romanian team to reach the podium in this competition. Looking back, what would you do differently, what would you improve?

That's a very good question. I think we would have been much more efficient if we had not had dead time, if we had started the fundraising campaign much earlier and started some discussions with strategic partners, such as the Ministry of Development, and if we had insisted more on each individual challenge to gain more points. But as all the resources were limited and we were just a handful of strudens with big dreams, I think the results we achieved are beyond the expectations we initially had.

You have demonstrated that you have made a viable project. What's next? Is there a chance that the project will be implemented? How do you think it will materialize in relation to the transformation of dormitory districts?

The project of integrated renovation of blocks built during the communist period is a much more complex project than we had foreseen, because there is a social and legislative problem at the heart of it, which takes a long time to solve. 95% of the tenants are owners, at the moment there is a transition in terms of social and age categories living in these blocks. At the same time, all efforts must be linked to an active dialogue with the authorities in order to create an applicable and efficient legislative framework for the implementation of the project.

There is a good chance that the project will be put into practice in the near future in a pilot project financed by European funds. Let's renovate a block, test and monitor it and then draw a conclusion: what are the benefits in relation to the investment and where adjustments can be made. Then it can be replicated and adapted according to the area.

Do you think there is a real chance to be included in the national nZEB strategy?

Why not?! We've spent the last 18 months studying an area that hasn't been talked about much in recent years. We've been doing research to find data on buildings built during the communist period, which hasn't been easy. We have set the professional community a great challenge, to renovate for the long term and to create an effective mechanism by which we can extend the life of the buildings we study. We demonstrated in the most prestigious international competition that we have a viable project and that we are training the future professionals that the Romanian construction market needs. The answer is yes, there are real chances and we want to get involved.

Congratulations to the Over4 team for their effort and involvement and to all those who contributed to their success! Speaking of involvement! Over4 are now involved in building a house for a single mother with 6 children, a humanitarian project Eli Builds. Congratulations again!