From the street it just looks like a house. The local site is what graduate student in architecture Susan Ungerleider calls a “solar passive super house,” one she designed with four other architecture students last year.
The Orange County site is a culmination of an almost yearlong project Ungerleider undertook with the other students. Ungerleider worked with architecture graduate students Andrew Darab, Frank Giordano, Eric Jabaley and K.C. Kurtz to present their “green” house in the North Carolina Sustainable Building Design Competition last year where they won and later tied for a national title as well.
Under the advisory of Randy Lanou, an adjunct professor, and Tom Barrie, a faculty adviser in the School of Architecture, the team completed a semester independent study where team members developed the house plans for the competition’s ultimate prize – having the house built by Habitat for Humanity in three North Carolina counties.
“It was a really intense independent study, but it was something we were all interested in and passionate about,” Ungerleider said. “Having the design actually built by Habitat is what we’re all the most excited about.”
Constructing buildings to be more efficient with the surrounding natural environment is a leading trend in architecture, Barrie said.
“There’s a real interest from students at this school, and really schools nationwide, to be part of the solution for global climate change. They know the significant role that the built environment plays,” Barrie said.
According to Barrie, 45 to 50 percent of the contributions to climate change come from buildings, compared with 25 percent from transportation.
The group built a full-scale model of one of the house’s walls as part of its project for the state competition.
Ungerleider said one key was to make sure the group was situating the house in a manner that would use natural light most effectively. The layout looks like a cross, with the living room and kitchen in the short end and bedrooms along the longer end.
The project came with a real-life scenario for the house’s inhabitants. Each competing team in the North Carolina competition was given a real site and a fictional family to live in the house. The N.C. State team had a long, narrow site in Orange County and had to create the design for a single mother with a son in a wheelchair, a partially blind daughter and a dog. Layout parameters called for a house less than 1,200 sq. ft. with each square foot costing less than $46. The final product came to 1,156 sq. ft., about $43 per square foot.
“It was fun to plan the layout of the house because there were a lot of things to think about, but it was small enough to get down to the details,” Ungerleider said. “It’s so simple — it’s doing a lot for its occupants.”
Winning at the state level moved the team to the 2006 U.S. Green Building Council Natural Talent Design Competition in Denver, Colo. To prepare for the national competition, the group had to condense its project display down to only two posters.
The only thing team members could not prepare for at the national level was the presence of professional firms in the competition. In North Carolina, the contest is limited to students, but other states have different rules allowing for professional firms to participate as well.
Project adviser Lanou said the presence of professional firms at the national level showed the uneven playing field in which the team competed.
At first, Ungerleider said the team members were upset to find out they tied for first place with two other groups. But when they found out it was a tie with two professional firms and they were the only students to take the prize, the exhilaration of victory sunk in.
