Cradle to Cradle design certainly sounds good in theory, but what does it look like in practice? The C2C Home Competition, which opened last summer in Roanoke, Virginia, sought to answer that very question. The results are now in -- and if this is what a future of "embracing renewable energy, recyclable materials, and nature as a model for design" will look like, the neighborhoods of post-oil, post-auto cities will be stunning places indeed. And, more to the point, the neighborhoods of Roanoke will start to look pretty stunning, too. The winning C2C designs will be built starting this summer.
The competition received 625 submissions from 41 countries, and managed to narrow the selection down to four professional and four student designs. Jurors were Daniel Libeskind, Bill McDonough, Randall Stout and Sarah Susanka. Some of the contest rules were a bit abstract; the guiding principles included points such as "Restore: The home you design must stop the process of taking and begin the process of giving" and "Exert Intergenerational Responsibility: The World Belongs to the Living. Consider this as it relates to the objective of loving all children of all species for all time." The base design and space guidelines, however, were fairly straightforward.
The results, however, were anything but.
The student winner, Sean Wheeler, came up with something called pMod, described in Metropolis this way:
Sean Wheeler transformed recycled billboards and train cars into the comfortable, flexible “pMod”: a portable, modular dwelling that combines the upgradeable adaptability of the PC with pleasingly domestic elements like roof gardens, courtyards, and porches.
(Excerpt from high resolution image)
The professional winner, a team led by Matthew Coates and Tim Meldrum, has a more polished look than the student winner, but is just as intriguing. Their design sheet covers energy ("This design utilizes timeless passive solar strategies... excess power is distributed to neighboring homes and street lighting infrastructure."), water ("A vegetated roof system collects and filters stormwater into the building core."), materials ("Rapidly renewable soy-foam wall panels offer superior thermal resistance with minimal embodied energy."), ventilation ("Prevailing summer wind from the southwest flows freely up the length of the site toward the upturned earth plane."), and community ("No advances in residential building design and technology truly matter if single families remain isolated and independent of one another.").
High-resolution images of each of the four professional and four student winners can be found here.
(Via Space and Culture)
Comments (1)
How cool is that?! Thanks for posting that Jamais. I've already left a message with the 2nd Place Professional winner, an architect from the Twin Cities, to explore possible collaboration on a real estate network idea I'm developing.
Posted by Joseph Willemssen | February 11, 2005 6:07 PM
Posted on February 11, 2005 18:07