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Chain of Eco-Homes Competition - Public Voting


Jorbu
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Hello everyone,

 

I recently entered a competition to design an Eco-home for Greensburg, Kansas, which is a town that was devastated by a tornado about 2 years ago. The town is in the process of rebuilding itself as a sustainable community and environmentaly friendly town.

 

I would like to ask you for your vote if you have a minute to spare. The link to my entry is below. Simply enter your e-mail address, submit your vote and then confirm the e-mail link that is sent to you. Very simple.

 

http://www.freegreen.com/greensburg/plan-general.aspx?id=16

 

I will not be offended if you don't like my scheme and feel compelled to vote for a different scheme, but I would very much appreciate your vote.

 

Model was created in Rhino and SketchUp and final was rendered using Vray for SU. As always feedback is welcomed on the images and presentation boards.

 

Thanks,

Jorge B

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You have some nice ideas. I'm not totally sold on the layout of everything though, there are a few things that could make the space work better.

 

My main complaints are with the driveway, garage, and exterior to interior circulation. The garage looks pretty unusable because of how it's arranged. Making a 90 degree turn into a garage is never fun and backing out of it, you will be running off the side of the driveway in order to get turned around. In Kansas, it's nice to have an attached garage so you don't have to deal with the extreme weather we have here while going to and from your car, especially while lugging groceries into the house (having to open/close two sets of exterior doors seems like a waste)

 

I'm may be wrong here, but I thought the grass pavers were only supposed to be for occasional use. In a driveway situation they would get too much abuse to allow for the grass to actually grow.

 

I do think you have a nice simple design overall. I really like how you incorporated the basement into the site and design. The planter beds on top of the basement cubes was also a nice touch.

 

The aerial photograph of the farmland was a bit cheesy for my taste.

 

You have a nice roof design and I liked your selection of materials. Limestone is a great native material here.

 

Either way I think you have a good design for the contest. You got my vote.

 

I wish I would have know about this contest. It would have been fun to enter. I live less than two hours away from Greensburg so I will be curious to see what gets built down there. The architecture school I went to has a couple of structures that have been built there already.

 

Good luck with everything!

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Were there any sort of requirements that the design incorrporate tornado resistant features? I ask because it would only make sense to go eco and provide a safe tornado resistant structure. Not just eco. I could design a house out of mud and straw but I probably wouldn't want to be in it when a tornado hits.

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Thanks to all that have voted...keep them coming :)

 

Ross, thanks a lot for your comments...I agree with you on the layout...I realized it would have been better to have a direct connection from the garage to the house without having to go around...still doesn't address the orientation....but just ran out of time... In regards to the pavers I think grass would be hard to maintain, but overall it would still help with drainage even if it was gravel in between the pavers. I'm curious myself on how the town will evolve and hope they make the right choices along the way. Thanks again for your vote and I'm glad you like the project.

 

Brian, the brief for the competition did call out the fact that the town is obviously in tornado valley and we needed to provide shelter and one of the criteria for the project was endurance not just physcally, but also through generations. We addressed the tornado factor by providing a safe room along with "burying" the bedroom spaces below ground and burming around the house with the dirt that was excavated. We were given 3 wall types to choose from and we selected CMU blocks for the construction...thought that gave us more flexibility and strength.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hello everyone,

 

I just wanted to thank all of you who took the time to vote for our entry, your votes were very welcomed and I know they played a role in the final round of judging.

 

As a result, my team's entry ended up winning 1st place for the wall type category and 2nd place overall... you can see the winning entries here as well as all 200+ entries too...

 

http://www.freegreen.com/greensburg/

 

Thanks again!

 

Jorge B

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Thanks Ross. We're trying to sort that out with the sponsors of the competition. They're definitely moving forward with the overall winner of the competition, but they've express interest in building all top 3 designs. So we still have some followup work to do and keep our fingers crossed.

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