The following text and images are by Matthew Coates and Tim Meldrum, with Brendan Connolly, Ron van der Veen, Kristine Kenney, Julie Petersen, and Richard Franko, the winning professional team in the Cradle to Cradle Home Competition.

ENERGY is neither created nor destroyed. It is collected and returned. This design utilizes passive solar strategies by shielding unwanted summer sun and absorbing heat from low winter sun through its thermal mass. Active solar collection provides the main source of necessary electrical energy. The core extends vertically, clad with a super-conductive photosynthetic plasma cell skin that is able to generate 1200% more electrical voltage per area than contemporary photovoltaics. Building on current research involving extracted spinach protein, the living skin is photosynthetic and phototropic. It grows and follows the path of the sun, generating electricity in excess of single family needs. Excess power is distributed to neighborhood homes and street lighting infrastructure.

WATER is a crucial resource to life that should be enhanced by future development. This design integrates building with landscape. A vegetated roof system collects and filters stormwater into the building core. This core collects and supplies all household plumbing elements contained within it. Black and gray water are released to a primary septic tank below the core and eventually released as effluent to the "living garden." Garden beds along the entry receive irrigation and nutrients to provide site-yield vegetables. This system is engineered to accept and treat residential wastewater from neighboring homes in addition to the primary residence to lessen off-site dependency.

MATERIALS should enable, not consume. Earth acts as a primary insulator and reduces building material use. Rapidly renewable soy-foam wall panels offer superior thermal resistance with minimal embodied energy. Reconstituted concrete with striated polymer mesh reinforcement efficiently supports the open building plan, allowing a flexible arrangement of partitions and spaces to accommodate present and future uses.

VENTILATION is fundamental to comfort in southern climates. Prevailing summer wind from the southwest flows freely up the length of the site toward the upturned earth plane. The building form and contour increase the speed of wind while the roof overhang captures the breeze and directs it through operable louvers to the interior. The core serves as a stack ventilation tower, allowing a controllable flow of hot air up and out of the house by the positive pressure being created within the house. Shaded outdoor space provides comfort choices for users and interaction with neighbors.

COMMUNITY underlies all technological success. No advances in residential building design and technology truly matter if single families remain isolated and independent of one another. This design suggests that community interdependence is the necessary foundation for future growth. One home shelters one family, but creates a resource that benefits many. Excess energy is distributed to offset conventional power production while communal waste is retained on site, collected and treated to nurture common garden space. In time, this seed of shared resources spreads through common design to create a fundamental line between individual and whole.

Home and the function of the core

Winning Board-

great post. I think it is funny that none of the university teams were good enough to have a winner from that category. Speaks greatly of the level of education in regards to thoughtful sustainable design.

good to see this post... several workmates and myself were going to submitt a design for this but never had the time to get it rolling... we did go See William McDonough speak on his Cradle to Cradle concept and I must say was impressed... definetly an eye opener... I would suggest anyone to read his book "Cradle to Cradle"... a great read and really makes you think about the world we live in today...

Scott M

Wow, all those ideas together look impressive. Does that photovoltaic skin exist actually?

Wow, all those ideas together look impressive. Does that photovoltaic skin exist actually?

Yes nice post mate, Thanks!

I certainly have the same question here.

Recent ARTICLE (http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/42423) about the construction.

I remember when my firm was working on a competition entry we determined that this competition should have been preceeded with a brief or competition to develop a performance specification something to base the almost futurist notions of the C2C home upon. We speculated that the real challenge to the issue of "sustainability" in design is one of immersion of new technologies as well as the testing and creative implementation of both existing and new technologies over time. This is not an aesthetic issue initialy, although the apearance of the assembled pieces is an issue. The parts ( availabilty and affordability)and how they conflate to make a livable space is really the problem. The conflation of a detailed performance specification to the making of space... Now thats a challange.

Developing furture technology designs and future living systems without existing technologies is a "hoverboard" design competition. The reality is can the average home owner make an affordable '"hoverboard"?

I am not surprised by the rather poor performance in the cold hard light of reality. Competitions rarely address the reality... more the perception of the reality. I think thats why we love competitions so much. The WTC competition is a prime example of the reality not coinciding with the design intent.. for various reasons .. firmly rooted in the reality of commerce and the reality based making of architecture.

Even the Advanced Building Systems Integration Consortium (ABSIC) (http://www.arc.cmu.edu/cbpd/absic/index.html) with its amazing list of members (http://www.arc.cmu.edu/cbpd/absic/absic_members.html) and millions of dollars has not gotten this realtionship settled yet. Although ABSIC is mainly related to commercial buildings there main concern is the built environment. Lets hope more of their research gets developed and into larger and larger markets.

ps this might be another paper vs reality thread.

I don't belive this is actually the house that will be built. I'm not sure I remeber how the competition worked but, weren't there a few catergories. House that could actually be built vs. houses that couldn't? This is the house that will be built.