Property Values

‘Cradle-to-cradle’ design competition gives birth to US home

A new house is currently taking shape in Gainsboro, Virginia. It may look like the other homes on the block, with its typical pitched roof and wood cladding. But this one marks a big change in building philosophy. It’s the first actual building to emerge from an international ‘C2C Home’ design competition organised two years ago in line with the ‘cradle-to-cradle’ principles of green architecture guru Bill McDonough.

As laid down by organisers SmithLewis Architecture, the competition’s 600-plus submissions were judged on some rigorous holistic principles. The Gainsboro house ticks the “exert intergenerational responsibility” box, for example, thanks to a modular design made up of sustainably harvested wooden boxes, which can in theory be adapted for future residents, or sent back to the manufacturer for recycling when they’ve reached the end of their life. As for “stop the process of taking and begin the process of giving”, the low-flush toilets and energy-efficient appliances reduce the ‘take’, and the ‘giving’ ideal is there in the building’s water collection system - using none other than recycled pickle barrels to harvest rain.

Yet environmentalists and design buffs were disappointed that the house is indeed so ordinary. For it wasn’t in fact the winning entry. First place went to a design [left] with a radical solar power system based on a photosynthetic plasma cell skin that works like leaves, and other entrants envisioned strawbale constructions with hydroponic vegetable gardens on the roof.

But, as organiser Greg Lewis explains, the design they’re using in Gainsboro “was selected because of its economics. It’s being built in a neighbourhood where property values are very, very low.” The winning design would cost half a million dollars to build, he says. That would put it way out of line with adjacent properties in the regeneration area, worth only $80,000-95,000. The US department of housing and urban development (the source of part of the project’s funding) also considered the more contemporary designs to be inappropriate for such a historic area, with its hundred-year-old houses, says Lewis.

Nevertheless, he’s determined to see more of the winning designs come to life in some nearby neighbourhood where they’ll “fit in better”. Even if they haven’t yet translated the extraordinary into everyday life, he’s convinced they’re “furthering the discussion of what sustainability looks like”. - Hannah Bullock

12 January 2007