Project entry 2020 for North America

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    Agriculture defines the new life: the site has orchard, raised beds, greenhouse, unit planters.

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    Residents share guest bedroom, rec-room, community space, storage, greenhouse and green systems.

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    House As Garden faces south, with a cascade of cultivated terraces merging with BIG’s community garden, now extended across the site - a new prototype for building in the grid. It takes advantage of its capacious lot and reorientation to solve the pervasive problem of deep buildings with narrow exposures at front and back and little fenestration on their sides. Big outdoor spaces for individual units are a rare amenity in Chicago but vital to a comfortable green future.

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    The building is a self-sustaining habitat for human bodies and an organism in itself. The analogy is overworked but predicts our compact, intricate, evolved, and efficient combination of metabolic systems. House As Garden has a complex digestive tract; manages its temperature via self-generated energy and natural ventilation; contributes to residents’ nutrition with its greenhouse and orchard; and is thermally secure behind its insulating skin. It sinks carbon and produces none. It's home.

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    Our acupuncture stimulates new agriculture, housing, and connections: a neighborhood reborn.

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    Simple engineered lumber construction promotes local participation, training, and systems evolution.

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    Eight flexible units (7 two bed, 1 one bed) allow a trade-off between larger terrace of living room.

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    Outward looking community space is accessed from the street and units from a through-block mews.

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    Environmental apparatus is from a kit of parts, economically available “off the shelf.”

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    A model home and living laboratory for harmonized environmental systems and neighborly green living.

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    Uniting Our Skills for Sustainability, Beauty, Community, and Social Justice.

Last updated: November 13, 2021 New York, NY, USA

Sustainability is for Everyone: A Building Block for Community Development and Growth

The idea of sustainability is both privileged and confused. While best practices - natural ventilation, rational orientation and openings, thermal mass, use of renewables, net zero construction - can be found in traditional architectures, environmental culture in the USA remains both exotic and contested. The comfortable find it superfluous. Others think it’s a foible of the organic Chardonnay-drinking, Tesla-driving, rich. Our national government believes climate change is a hoax. We don’t. And, we see the environmental burden very unevenly shared, with the poor, the elderly, and communities of color disproportionately afflicted. Our project is grassroots: a battered community remakes and sustains itself via the tools of home-grown, green systems, buildings, practices, and habits.

Sustainability is Both Condition and Tool, Realized Socially, Technically, and as Art

Rational and appropriate technology is at the core. Our project offers a new interpretation of the classic “four-flat” that’s both flexible and replicable. Construction is timber with four basic elements: columns, beams, CLT plates, and modular exterior panels. All are dimensioned for ease of erection and fabrication by local small contractors, carpenters, and apprentices: a school and a lab for building, sustainable adaptation, agriculture, and community organizing. This spirit of sharing is central and includes, on site, collective recreation, agriculture, community meeting spaces, a “spare bedroom” for guests (or Airbnb) and the instructive visibility of environmental systems. These houses will be an “export” product, transforming and enriching neighborhoods and spreading the word.

Sustainability Demands Economy, Efficiency, and Communication of Means and Techniques

First sustainable priority is to passive measures: thick, heavily insulated walls, thermal glazing, cross ventilation, and seasonal shading. House As Garden is built of manufactured wood. Photovoltaics provide power for its heat pump and appliances, topped up by storage batteries and a new local grid. The building will be net carbon positive, thanks to key systems and materials and its extensive greenery and lush orchard. Rainwater is collected and cisterned. Blackwater is remediated via anaerobic digestion and resulting grey water is recirculated for toilet flushes (all appliances low water and energy) and watering. Recycling and composting will be easy. Cars and bikes are shared. A focus of community pride and place, it will celebrate the logic and ease of truly sustainable living.