In recent times, teaching in higher education has undergone a significant transformation. Current advances and innovative proposals in educational science research are centred around a transdisciplinary approach, the so-called integrated curriculum and the incorporation of the transversal concept of sustainability. In summary, the so-called learning processes through problem-solving. The Solar Decathlon Competition is the most prestigious international university student competition for sustainable habitat. The aim of this article is to show how the Aura Strategy, developed by the University of Seville Solar Decathlon Team to participate in the Solar Decathlon 2019 Latin America and Europe competitions, is aligned with the aforementioned proposals. Among the results, the generation of a transforming teaching network of the departmental structures in the University of Seville is to be highlighted. These transformations in teaching lead students to new, broader and more holistic approaches to study, as well as new capabilities and skills. The question of interdisciplinarity requires new tools and research lines to achieve successful implementation in higher education, and the participation in the Solar Decathlon Competition is one of them.

As a large proportion of housing stock does not meet the current demands for energy and comfort (leading to high levels of obsolescence and vulnerability), the annual rate of energy upgrades for the existing stock must be increased. The AURA Strategy is an intervention methodology which focuses on the regeneration of neighbourhoods or obsolete urban fabrics which suffer from high levels of architectural, urban and socio-economic vulnerability. Within this context, the AURA 3.1 prototype was developed for the Solar Decathlon Europe 2019 Competition. The project was based around a sustainable construction strategy for the urban regeneration of obsolete residential neighbourhoods, through the reuse of existing buildings considering Mediterranean climate and energy. The Poligono San Pablo neighbourhood was chosen as the case study. This article presents the main retrofit action: the juxtaposition on the existing building of a structural-architectural system which provides new technological and spatial features. Quantitative data regarding the validity and effectiveness of the AURA Strategy could be collected from the monitoring of the Pavilion prototype during the competition. Two first prizes were won in contests with on-site measurements: Comfort conditions and House Functioning. Third place was also obtained in the Sustainability contest, thus confirming the enormous possibilities the AURA Strategy has for sustainable urban regeneration in retrofitting social housing, within the limitations of the competition.

This article proposes a hybrid methodology to represent the energy poverty situation in neighbourhoods with high vulnerability indices, using public data sources and surveys designed for local contexts. As an innovation, the method includes aspects of feminisation poverty, household health and information collected directly from the case study population. The San Pablo neighbourhood, in southern Spain, has been taken as a case study, to extrapolate the strategy to similar European neighbourhoods. The research has made it possible to identify new factors affecting the energy poverty situation, such as the domestic burden associated with households or the lack of accessibility to dwellings. The incorporation of this type of indicators, which have been analysed according to sex, has made it possible to highlight the process of feminisation of energy poverty in the territory under study. Based on the groups identified as the most vulnerable, new lines of research are opened to define actions and best practices that can be implemented to improve household energy vulnerability.