C2C Competition: In the End, Boring Wins
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 08. 2.06
It used to be, if someone held an architectural competition, that it was a great opportunity for entries out of left field from young unknowns to win, and to change the face of architecture. It also used to be that there was a dichotomy between green architecture (often derided as crunchy granola and far more interested in the way you build than what you build) and good cutting edge modern architecture that we all look at in the magazines and on Inhabitat and Mocoloco. We thought this was history- after all, TreeHugger exists to promote good green design and you don't get in unless you are both, but in two major competitions the tilt has been to status quo, "lets just concentrate on the green and ignore the design". In the recent Archetype competition, they just picked the boring, because, well, it had great green credentials and they had to sell it to developers. At least they are building the winner.
Far more obnoxious is the C2C competition, where they gave the prize to a marvelous, modern and innovative project that ran on spinach, but when it came to building......
as organizer Gregg Lewis says in Inhabitat: "Many of the designs, including many of the winners, were far more progressive in their thinking relative to the environmental sustainability than they were in addressing the question of economic viability. We are continuing to pursue development of a number of the winning designs elsewhere in the region where price won’t be quite as much of a constraint and will look forward to seeing a variety of the solutions in their built form." translated: Let's build the cheap one that won't scare the neighbours.
Architects are not stupid (well they are, or they wouldn't be architects) , they look at the jury and judge their chances before they enter competitions. If innovative, challenging designs lose to contextual front-porch jobs because jurors cannot judge both architecture and systems, then we will not get the best architects even bothering to enter these competitions. This is a great loss- we need ideas that change the way we look at buildings, not how we look at plumbing. ::Inhabitat
I'm not surprised about the gap between the winning and the built. This is an industry that in toto tends to shoot itself in the foot. I recently did some work (some on my blog, some coming out in E: the environmental magazine soon) about two parallel trends in N. American housing: it's getting greener, compared to yesteryear, but at the same time, it's also getting bigger (despite the hipness of 'small') -- which negates those environmental benefits.
Add to this a genuine attraction people have (for better or worse, it's there, and homebuilders I talked to emphasized it) to a traditionally shaped house, with the gable roof, painted siding, etc. Many people just don't feel "at home" anywhere else. Making radically green housing popular will be tough.
Economic viability matters. If you want to change the market (to greener homes), you have to build a product people will buy and know they'll be able to resell.
Some of the premise of the critique is misguided: it assumes that cultural, traditional structures are NOT green- and that Green architecture is the sole instrument of contemporary practice. On the contrary. The Porches, which are lamented as being the blockade to new design -therefore green design- are examples of traditional regionalism at its best: We were much greener when we relied on porches, courtyards, eves and overhangs, cross breezes, and stacked ventilation.
Rather than using History, The image of the 'better' design looks awfull stylish (If I don't mow my lawn I get stylish looking grass growing like that too), but all that concrete, glass, and metal, takes alot of evergy to produce, transport, and form. I'm sure it has all sorts of mechanical devices and solar pannels or whatnot to help power the house, but the Greener answer would have been to passivly design the house to do the jobs these active mechanisms do, without energy consumption.
Not that I'm holding up the traditional house shown in the poor rendering as the model standard, but lets not be so quick to condemn whats familar because it has been done before.
i agree-- while i want to see more funkified ecohomes myself-- i may be a freak comapred to joe normal... in fact recently a few people have asked me if there are green houses "more like those energy star homes, you know, normal looking." I dunno, i think yurts & earthships are cool, but lotsa people i guess just want the normal picket fence home, just made out of sustainable materials, and with all the geothermal radiant 'plumbing' funny that..