“Designing a socially viable and autonomous environment to empower the community”
Regional Jury Report – North America
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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.
Last updated: November 13, 2021 Eclepens, Switzerland
Project description by jury
House as Garden originates from a collaboration with a non-profit organization, Blacks in Green, to transform a problematic neighborhood of Chicago into a new sustainable district – a “sustainable square mile”. The project consists of a residential complex including eight flexible housing units and a number of internal and external shared areas, including a guest bedroom, spaces for collective recreation and green areas for on-site agriculture. The provision of community spaces that serve different functions fosters a sense of shared empowerment by encouraging self-sustainment and collaboration between residents.
The construction process promotes local participation and training using simple and easy-to-assemble timber elements. Engagement in sustainability is encouraged through the instructive visibility of environmental systems. The building achieves a net positive energy demand thanks to a rational and appropriate use of passive and active design strategies for energy efficiency. Water treatment, collection and reuse is also conceived as a part of the sustainable concept.
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.
Project overview - House as Garden in Illinois - Self-sustaining collaborative neighborhood