AIA Presents House for an Ecologist Awards

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) presented its House for an Ecologist awards in May 2006 during the Architecture of Sustainability conference, co-hosted by AIA’s Committee on Design and Committee on the Environment. The contest was born out of the dilemma that sustainability “often is seen as a purely technical or ethical agenda and not an aesthetic one. In the construction industry, efforts to improve environmental performance have focused primarily on the science of building and neglected the art of architecture.” Entrants were asked to address this problem through the design of a 1,500 ft² (140 m²) or smaller living and working space for a theoretical ecologist in residence at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center in Shepardstown, West Virginia, the site of the conference.

The jury was made up of Peter Bohlin, FAIA, of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson; Allison Ewing, AIA, of Hays + Ewing Design Studio; Susan Szenasy, of

Metropolis magazine; and James Timberlake, FAIA, of Kieran Timberlake Associates, LLP. The jury considered the 80 entries’ design excellence, celebration of place, conservation of resources, and design process, and selected three winners and six honorable mentions. A blog containing information about the conference and the competition is online at www.architectureofsustainability.blogspot.com. The winners are:

• Eskin House, by James Bowen, AIA, and Mark Weston, Assoc. AIA, of Bowen Architecture, in Sarasota, Florida. This 150 ft² (42 m²) pod was designed be hung from a pedestrian bridge on the property. The walls of the main room can open to the landscape, and a set of photovoltaic (PV) panels covers the stairs that lead to the pod. Eskin House “rejected the notion of what ‘house’ really is,” says the jury, which described the design as the most provocative of the submissions.

• The Landscape House, by Raphaëlle Maul, of Maul Dwellings, SL, in San Sebastian, Spain. The Landscape House was designed as an open steel-frame box with a more closed inner core. The south façade features an operable window wall, and PV panels and a water collection system are prominently displayed. The Landscape House was designed for disassembly, using prefabricated pieces.

• Water Wall House, by Andre Kamili, Jesse Taylor, and Cindy Lee, of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott, in Boston. This two-story building features a wall of water tubes on the south. Rainwater is collected in a holding tank on the roof, fed slowly through the wall to warm in the sun, and then stored under the floor to provide some heat to the room before it is used.