USGBC's 2010 Natural Design Competition, in partnership with Salvation Army's EnviRenew Initiative, is focused on the rebuilding effort in New Orleans. Competitors will be divided into students and young professionals groups and will design a LEED for Homes project that is priced affordably and is functional for elderly occupants. Up to four designs will be selected from the local competition finalists to be showcased at Greenbuild 2010 and, for the first time, the designers will see their projects built in New Orleans' Broadmoor neighborhood. Once the homes are built, they will enter a measurement and verification phase in which they will be graded on energy efficiency, water reuse, and indoor air quality among other categories. The design team whose home performs best during measurement and verification will be awarded the final grand prize.
In North Carolina, the NC Triangle Emerging Professionals have partnered with the NC Sustainable Building Design Competition which is managed by the NC Solar Center. The NC Triangle Chapter of USGBC provides a stipend for the winners of the NCSBDC to attend the USGBC's annual Greenbuild Conference.
About NCSBDC
The N.C. Sustainable Building Design Competition [NCSBDC] began in 2000 as a way to engage students in universities, colleges and community colleges to learn and apply the lessons of sustainable design and construction. Each year statewide winners see their design built as part of the grand prize. The program is currently administered by Advanced Energy and began as a collaboration with the Triangle Emerging Green Builder Natural Talent Design Competition in 2006.
Vision of NCSBDC
Growing crises in water and air quality call for vast changes in building design, materials and methods of construction. It is imperative that the retrofit of existing buildings and design of new buildings embody the innovation needed to forge an ecologically sustainable future — that is a future which is healthy and viable for the planet and all its inhabitants. The North Carolina Sustainable Building Design Competition [NCSBDC] emerged to address the growing concerns over ecological sustainability and the role of the design building industries for a healthy, viable future. The NCSBDC's goals lead toward this future by:
Developing student competency in sustainable building design
Fostering meaningful exchange between industry and academia
Ushering innovation into the design and building industry relative to sustainability
It is our desire that all new and remodeling construction projects employ sustainable guidelines. It is hoped that these practices will spur the development of guideline specifications for four zones in North Carolina (coastal, coastal plain, piedmont, mountain), and, this model (based on geographical zones) will spread throughout the United States and the world.
For more information on the NC Sustainable Building Design Competition, visit http://www.ncsc.ncsu.edu/sustainabledesigncompetition.php
For more information about the USGBC National Talent Design Competition, please visit
http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=257
