Thursday, May 3, 2012
News
Green Houses Grow on the National Mall
Green Houses Grow on the National Mall
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The New York Times
Free for dinner in Washington? Nineteen groups of architecture students will be serving meals next week at houses they have built in West Potomac Park, adjacent to the National Mall, as part of the Department of Energy’s biennial Solar Decathlon, a kind of “America’s Got Talent” for green architecture. The ambience at their dinner parties is one of 10 areas the students will be rated on. Others include market appeal, design, adequacy of hot water and affordability (a category added after a $2 million house from Germany won the 2009 competition).
Fifteen of the teams are from the United States, including one from Parsons the New School for Design (working with engineers from the Stevens Institute of Technology). Designed by students with the help of Professors Laura Briggs and David Lewis (of the Manhattan architecture firm Lewis Tsurumaki & Lewis), the so-called Empowerhouse, pictured, will become part of a duplex in the low-income Deanwood section of Washington, under the auspices of Habitat for Humanity.
The houses will be open Friday through Oct. 2. Visitors can expect long lines, given the compactness of the houses and the intense interest among advocates of energy conservation. In 2009, there were more than 300,000 visitors over 10 days, said Richard King, director of the event. Because the German team didn’t enter this year, he added, “it’s a wide-open competition.”
Click here to view the original story.
For press inquiries please contact Joe Kildea at (202) 210-3250 or joekildea@rational360.com.