House as Garden in Illinois

Self-sustaining collaborative neighborhood

House as Garden in Illinois

Self-sustaining collaborative neighborhood

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

    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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    Holcim Foundation Awards Gold North America

    Winner presentation House as Garden - Self-sustaining collaborative neighborhood, Chicago, USA (l-r): Kate Ascher, Member of the Board of the Holcim Foundation, Milstein Professor of Urban Development, Columbia University, USA Principal at Happold Consulting, USA; Joan Copjec, Terreoform/Brown University, USA and Naomi Davis, Blacks in Green, USA receive the prize on behalf of Michael Sorkin Studio, New York, USA.

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

    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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    Holcim Foundation Awards Gold North America

    Winner presentation House as Garden - Self-sustaining collaborative neighborhood, Chicago, USA - Naomi Davis, Blacks in Green, USA receives the prize on behalf of Michael Sorkin Studio, New York, USA.

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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

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    Holcim Foundation Awards Gold North America

    Winner presentation House as Garden - Self-sustaining collaborative neighborhood, Chicago, USA (l-r): Maria Atkinson, Chairperson, Holcim Foundation (at podium); Kate Ascher, Member of the Board of the Holcim Foundation, Milstein Professor of Urban Development, Columbia University, USA Principal at Happold Consulting, USA; Joan Copjec, Terreform/Brown University, USA and Naomi Davis, Blacks in Green, USA receive the prize on behalf of Michael Sorkin Studio, New York, USA; and Reed Kroloff, Head of the Holcim Awards jury North America 2020 (at podium).

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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

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    House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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

  • Awards Gold 2020–2021 North America

A self-sustaining and collaborative neighborhood in where resource efficiency is the key to personal empowerment.

By Michael Sorkin - Michael Sorkin Studio, New York City, NY, USA

Ideas: Inclusion, Economic & Social Empowerment

Rooted in a partnership with the non-profit organization Blacks in Green, House as Garden reimagines housing in a historically underserved Chicago neighborhood as a catalyst for environmental and social regeneration. Conceived as a core component of a broader vision for a “sustainable square mile,” the project creates not just homes but a living framework for shared prosperity, self-reliance, and community cohesion. With flexible housing units interwoven with gardens, gathering spaces, and resource-efficient systems, House as Garden blurs the boundaries between dwelling, landscape, and collective empowerment.

House as Garden in Illinois

Project authors

  • Michael Sorkin

    Michael Sorkin Studio

    USA

Project Summary

Collaborative urban renewal

The project emerges from a strategic collaboration between architects and the grassroots organization Blacks in Green, aiming to transform a disinvested urban area into a thriving, sustainable district. It supports the non-profit’s mission to build local wealth through energy, food, housing, and culture, while enabling residents to remain and thrive within their own neighborhoods.

Flexible housing and shared spaces

The residential complex comprises eight adaptable housing units complemented by internal and external shared areas. These include a guest room, recreational zones, and green spaces dedicated to on-site agriculture. The spatial configuration encourages communal living, promotes interaction, and fosters a resilient social fabric.

House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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

Sustainable construction and local capacity building

Timber construction is used throughout, with a focus on simple, easy-to-assemble components that allow for local participation and skill development. The construction process becomes an educational tool—offering training opportunities and reinforcing the project’s social mission.

Environmental performance

House as Garden is designed to be net-positive in energy, utilising both passive and active strategies to reduce demand and generate surplus power. Systems for rainwater collection, greywater reuse, and ecological treatment are integrated visibly into the architecture, engaging residents with the workings of sustainable living.

Toward a sustainable square mile

Beyond the individual homes, the project sets the tone for a wider regenerative transformation. By combining architecture, environmental stewardship, and grassroots community engagement, House as Garden offers a replicable model for neighbourhood-scale sustainability that is inclusive, empowering, and deeply rooted in place.

Jury Appraisal

The Holcim Awards jury North America considered the project to be an impressive gesture of “organic” regeneration that is energetically focused on designing a socially viable and autonomous environment to empower the community. The proposal suggests an innovative residential building typology that not only gravitates around the value of sharing as a means of human empowerment, but that is also environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing. 

The jury particularly appreciated the great potential for flexibility and replicability of the project which promotes transferable sustainable practices under many aspects. The interesting and compelling way the architecture integrates “off the shelf” technologies (including solar PV panels, heat recovery ventilation, thermal glazing, greenhouses, etc.) was highly commended, especially in consideration of the affordability of the project. This proposal exemplifies how sustainable architecture can be designed to be both economical and beautiful – and can offer communities in need a new opportunity for their future.

This proposal exemplifies how sustainable architecture can be designed to be both economical and beautiful – and can offer communities in need a new opportunity for their future. Holcim Foundation Awards 2020 jury for North America

Project Author

  • Main Author

    Michael Sorkin

    Principal, Michael Sorkin Studio

    USA

House as Garden in Illinois, USA

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.

Project Updates

Statements on Sustainability

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • First sustainable priority is the implementation of 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.

  • To achieve net negative, materials are sourced for lowest embodied and emitted carbon. Engineered lumber structure sequesters 35 tons of CO2 and reduces greenhouse emissions vs. alternative materials by 75 tons for a 110-ton total benefit. Heating and cooling energy from metered photovoltaic array (estimated at 40,000 KWh/hour/year) and hot water from direct solar. Transport and manufacturing CO2 reduced by on-site fabrication and low-energy construction methods. Robust insulation with carbon negative dense-pack cellulose reduces emissivity on supply and demand sides. Low impact concrete/CMU foundations and retaining walls further cut via green mix, long cure, CO2 injection, light weight, reduced cement, non-fossil fuel SCM and are offset by net negative output of other systems and materials.