NCSBDC 2009 Update

We had an opportunity to visit the site of this year's NC Sustainable Building Design Competition last Saturday and found it quite helpful. The insight into the needs of the people who'll be living in the multi-family residential building, as well as the requirements of the development/maintainance company, forced me to re-assess the progress my team and I had made. This week has seen good progress with us taking the best points of our different individual schemes and meshing those into a cohesive approach while taking into account the information we learned from the site visit which will help us modify our ideas to conform more to what the developer and clients needs are. About seven or eight weeks remain. ARKTEK

NCSBDC 2009

(click to enlarge--we are to be designing for the lot to the right) [source]


(click to enlarge) [source]


Today in our Design Project class we turned in our individual design solutions for the North Carolina Sustainable Building Design Competition 2009. More can be found out about the project here on the competition website. The basic challenge is this:

Design a two-story, multi-family, residential building to meet the needs of CASA (Community Alternatives for Supportive Abodes), a local organization created in 1992 that provides supportive housing for individuals with mental illness, developmental disabilities, or substance abuse disorders. The approximately 6,000 square foot building will include nine individual apartments and an indoor community space for meetings and gatherings. The building shall be designed to high energy efficiency standards (approximately equivalent to LEED Platinum) and include sustainable design elements in the categories of indoor environmental quality, water efficiency, material selection, hazard mitigation, community preservation, and affordability. The project should also include universal accessibility and be within HUD design standards.

The next stage of the process will be for the four members of my team to get together and hash out a plan and a strategy that works for all of us from the four widely different proposals we presented in class today.

Once that is established we will develop our design to meet or exceed several sets of standards and benchmarks on which the project will ultimately be evaluated.

This will no doubt be a more intense competition for us than last year's was, as we are probably much more capable now as to some of the issues and design problems we will be facing. We know what we are up against this time. Last year we were in a little over our heads and just did what we could to keep our heads above water.

Last year's team decided to split up into two, so I have two new teammates returning from last year's competition.

I'll try to keep updating our progression throughout the semester.