A jury selected three winners and six “jury mentions” for the “A House for an Ecologist Ideas Competition,” which challenged architects and architecture students to design a live/work dwelling for an ecologist-in-residence at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on the grounds of the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

AIA Committee on Design members, with the cooperation of AIA Committee on the Environment members, developed the competition program in conjunction with “The Architecture of Sustainability” conference held in May 2006. Both the competition and conference stressed the need for sustainable design to embrace both the science of building and the art of architecture, as well as the potential for environmental innovation to contribute directly to design excellence.

Peter Bohlin, FAIA, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson; Allison Ewing, AIA, Hays + Ewing Studio; Susan Szenasy, editor of Metropolis magazine; and James Timberlake, FAIA, Kieran Timberlake served as jury members.

Competition winners

Eskin House, by James Bowen, AIA, and Mark Weston, Assoc. AIA, Bowen Architecture, Sarasota, Fla.
“We all gravitated to this project because it rejected the site, it rejected the notion of what “house” really is, and said an ecologist really only needs a place to bed down for the night, and a place to go to the bathroom, maybe take a shower, heat up some water. It takes a parasitic approach to an existing structure,” said the jury. “It made a decision to not build, which would disrupt the surrounding forest. The unique characteristic of this project is the simple rejection of the design problem. It was the most provocative of the submissions. By rejecting the palette, rejecting the site, and rejecting that it had to be a certain site, it should send a certain message about competitions: You have to take risks.”

Water Wall House, by Andre Kamili, Jesse Taylor, and Cindy Lee, Shepley Bulfinch Richardson Abbott, Boston
“This project is intriguing because it merged technology with aesthetics in a compelling and interesting way and also was a modest interpretation of the program. It is quite a beautiful and somewhat soft building that sits nicely in the landscape. Unlike many here, this is one we can read a potential sense of craft to, a kind of tactility to not only living in it but how it’s made. It is rooted on the site and is proud of that,” the jury remarked. “It’s not a unique technology, but in its representation—the horizontal striations that were drawn through it and the subtle transparency and translucency—it became more subtle in its transition.”

Landscape House, by Raphaelle and Alfredo Maul, Maul Dwellings, San Sebastian, Spain
“We like the pre-fab-ness of it, from prefabricated elements. We also had a lot of discussion about ‘touching lightly’—what a small footprint means. It could be totally non-physical, the footprint. We felt one of the selected schemes should be a design for disassembly. We liked its simplicity and its no-bones approach to its solution,” the jury said. “Things seem to be in balance with this particular scheme. It represents what a house for an ecologist needed to be—it wasn’t privileging one system over another but used a number of systems— photovoltaic, etc., beyond the disassembly. It took the premise of the program: house for an ecologist, single person, and said all of those givens were okay to work with.”

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