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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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