Syracuse Architecture announces three winners of From the Ground Up: Innovative Green Homes competition

Syracuse Architecture announces three winners of From the Ground Up: Innovative Green Homes competitionJanuary 23, 2009Mary Kate O’Brienmcobrien@syr.edu

The Syracuse University School of Architecture, in partnership with the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems and Home HeadQuarters Inc., has announced the three winners of the competition From the Ground Up: Innovative Green Homes, fostering advanced thinking about design, sustainability and cost-effective building practices for the single-family house.

Developed for a vacant infill site on Syracuse’s Near Westside, the proposals and resulting built work will provide a new vision for one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods and demonstrate the value of design within a typically underserved and demographically diverse community. These small domestic projects wed high standards of living with advanced technology and design to encourage revitalization of the Near Westside and similar neighborhoods across the country.

The three winning teams are:

• ARO and Della Valle Bernheimer, New York
• Cook + Fox / Terrapin Bright Green, New York and Washington, D.C.
• Onion Flats (including Andropogon Associates, Rivera Structural Design, and MaGrann Associates), Philadelphia

The four other teams to reach the final stage of the competition were Adjaye/Associates, London and New York; Office dA and Architecture Studio himma, Boston and Seoul; do-it-together.org, New York City and Kansas City; and Erdy McHenry Architecture and Stenson-Building + Furniture Design, Philadelphia and Syracuse.

“The seven finalists demonstrated remarkable skill in addressing this challenging project, which yielded a wide range of approaches,” says SU School of Architecture Dean Mark Robbins. “It is hoped that these houses will create new models for sustainability and innovation within limited budgets. The University has provided the seed capital for this research and design addressing the needs of our urban neighborhoods.”

“The winning designs include many innovative strategies for energy efficiency and superior indoor environmental quality that fit perfectly with the capabilities of firms in Central New York,” says Syracuse CoE Executive Director Edward Bogucz. “The construction of these homes will help strengthen our region’s reputation as a leader in green building design, technology and construction.”

“We’re excited to start building these innovative single-family homes on the city’s Near Westside,” says Kerry Quaglia, executive director of Home HeadQuarters Inc. “The winning designs are unique in that they incorporate new and sustainable green and energy technologies while remaining affordable to build and own.”

A symposium featuring presentations by the winning teams and a panel discussion will be held Feb. 3 at the SU School of Architecture beginning at 3:30 p.m. in the Slocum Hall auditorium with a reception to follow in the School of Architecture Gallery. Drawings and models by the seven finalists will be on view, supplemented by selections from the “sketchbooks” submitted by the 52 teams that entered the competition. The exhibition runs through Feb. 13. All events are free and open to the public.

“From the Ground Up” is a project of UPSTATE: A Center for Design, Research and Real Estate, created within the School of Architecture in 2005 as a resource for the city, campus and region to address critical issues of urban revitalization in the City of Syracuse, Upstate New York and nationally.

Additional support for this competition and programming is provided by The Central New York Community Foundation and the Community Preservation Corp.

For more information, visit http://soa.syr.edu.

Project images and additional information are available upon request.