The 99k House Competition

SUSTAINABLE LIVING | by CELESTE TELL

ROBERT F. KENNEDY FAMOUSLY ASKED US to not just “look at things the way they are, and ask why” but to “dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” And that is exactly what the Rice Design Alliance and Houston Chapter of the American Institute of Architects have done. In initiating the 99k House Competition, they have asked a very big “Why not?”

SOURCE: www.THE99KHOUSE.COM

The 99k House Competition asked architects all over the country to design a house that would cost no more than $99,000 in today’s dollars to be built in Houston’s Fifth Ward, an older, run-down and neglected neighborhood where foreclosures and vacant lots are common. Through this initiative the organizers hope to:

• Broaden awareness of affordable green building strategies
• Demonstrate that sustainable houses for less than $99k are possible
• Stimulate creation of replicable designs
• Build a site-specific prototype

I recently attended a local reception for the finalists and winning project. In order to achieve the rigorous program goals, each entry is chock full of innovative ideas and concepts. Some of these are generalizable, and others are context-specific to Houston, the Gulf Coast and the Fifth Ward.

I’d love to see more of this across the country. Different regions, climates and local culture would drive different design solutions. Fully developed, planned, prototyped, market-tested and taken to scale, ideas like these could very well reinvent the U.S. housing market. Boston. New York. Virginia. Atlanta. Miami. Detroit. Cleveland. Chicago. St. Louis. Dallas. Phoenix. Denver. Salt Lake City. Los Angeles. Oakland. Sacramento. Portland. Seattle. You get the picture.

And if anyone asks why, you know the response: Why not?