2008 Gallery of Entries

Category: Building | Tier: Professional Unbuilt

	Entry #24 99K House: Sustainable + Affordable + Demountable This winning entry for an international design competition challenging architects to create an innovative design for a small house that used use sustainable building practices and materials with a special concern for affordability, longevity, energy savings benefits, and appropriateness for the hot, humid Houston climate. Calling for a single-family house in Houston’s historic Fifth Ward, the winning design had to be adaptable to a variety of sites and have a construction budget under $99,000.
	Entry #35 Low cost wooden homes inspire sustainability We can increase the amount of useable solid wood and fiber removed from a given forest area by up to 70% without cutting additional trees. The wood is cut in a novel fashion that increases yield, reduces shipping costs and results in ultra low-cost self-assembly kit homes. More trees are left in the forest to sequester carbon and families living in poverty are afforded a chance to own their home and begin working their way out of poverty.
	Entry #37 Adaptive Mixed-Use Mid-Rise The Adaptive Mixed-Use Mid-Rise is located near a river in the Southwest. The project program contains retail space, office space, and a mix of residential types. The project design allows for flexible, reusable space and fast construction, is responsive to energy demands, and uses prefabricated components which agglomerate over time as market demand grows. The project may be disassembled, and components reused for a multitude of project types of different scales and uses.
	Entry #39 Spoor House The goal of this project is to promote sustainable living in suburban communities. The design focus is on a dwelling to the size of the average home built in the 1970s, which is 1550 sq ft, on a 0.1 acre plot. The house is to be prefabricated with 5 ISO containers, using off-the-shelf sustainable technologies, and conventional building techniques. Design and material choices are governed by longevity, environmental friendliness, and strength.
	Entry #48 Mixed Use Development This project is a high density, mixed use development located in near downtown Austin. For its construction the old Austin campus of a local university is being deconstructed with equipment and materials being reused and recycled. The new development will contain sustainably designed professional offices, medical offices, general retail, grocers, entertainment, a 4 star hotel, for sale residential, for rent residential, broad pedestrian sidewalks with street trees, and park spaces.
	Entry #49 \|ME:LU\| ME:LU stands for Modular Expandable: Living Unit and is based on a concept of providing a housing module that can work for a single person, a family, or even a temporary work force while still exemplifying a lifecycle form of design. We have designed expandability and sustainability / re-use into our modular living unit by using a standard cargo container with identical openings. This allows for the containers to be reconfigured in various ways and added to the initial layout of two containers.
	Entry #51 Contain Your Enthusiasm Used shipping containers are the refuse of modern, consumer society. About 50% are designed for a single use. The cost of their re-use being too high, they pile up at major shipping points and are left to rust. The problem grows as we consume more. Upcycling used containers is a highly “green” and responsible alternative. Three containers make a gracious 3-bedroom home of 1300 s.f. and 9’ ceilings. We’ve softened their industrial quality with simple wood trellis elements that provide shading.
	Entry #54 University Education Center 8.94 acres of Industrial Landfill Site is being converted into an Ecological Park. This 3,800 sf Environmental Educational Center will be the only built structure. The Park will be used to display a working landscape of plant production and experiments by local researchers and students. Aimed at promoting sustainability, the Environmental Center reuses materials from the adjacent industrial structures and meets LEED Gold requirements.
	Entry #59 The Workshop The Workshop is assembled of prefabricated building components for optimized efficiency and minimum waste. There are two units in the building – in the first iteration the first story is an office; the second is an apartment. The building is elevated on concrete piers and cantilevers over an existing structure on-site. Only the existing building and concrete piers will remain after the building is relocated for its next lifecycle.