In order to help sustainable design professionals learn more about this new building system and explore the versatility of our sustainable building kit, REOSE conducted a local Sustainable Design Competition for New Orleans. The competition challenged eight invited New Orleans-based architecture firms to use their creativity, ingenuity and materials provided to them to create a sustainable, energy-independent housing design capable of withstanding the world’s most severe environmental conditions. “We really want to open the international disaster relief housing market to New Orleans based architectural firms since they have experience dealing with disaster relief housing here in New Orleans” said Stephanie Mezynski.
The participating architects include:
AEDS (Ammar Eloueini Digit-All Studio)
Wisznia Architecture + Development
The competition was judged by a team, chaired by internationally recognized and founding US Green Building Council Board Member, Bill Reed, of Regenesis and the Integrative Design Collaborative of Boston, Massachusetts.
Each invited firm was given a carefully engineered list of parts packed into a virtual shipping container that lands on an imaginary island. For the contest, this Isle routinely experiences floods, wildfires, 150 mph hurricane winds, 8.0 earthquakes (Richter Magnitude scale), infestations of Formosa termites, and has high concentration of pollen, mold and mildew. The architects were tasked with unpacking the shipping container only to find that it contained ~ $100K in building materials, a complete parts list, user’s manuals and support documentation, yet had no architectural plans.
The competition’s architects were charged with designing up to two totally self-sufficient homes that would collect enough rainwater and generate enough electrical power to support a family of five for up to 25-years of continuous operation, yet was engineered and designed to last for generations in the harshest of environments. The completed homes are earthquake, hurricane, flood, mold, and fire resistant, qualify for up to 40% reduction in home owners insurance, and have a global, renewable, 10- year home warranty as a standard feature.
To view all the participating architects submissions please click here to download the PDF file.
