Students in Ontario undergraduate and graduate architecture, architectural technology, engineering, and environmental science/design programs are invited to participate in an ideas competition for a Smart House of the Future. Sponsored and coordinated by WORKshop, Inc., this two stage design competition seeks proposals that are innovative, pragmatic, and that could lead to an actual built prototype.
Contemporary materials and technologies, along with cultural and demographic shifts, are challenging traditional notions of the home. This competition invites participants to consider the domestic revolution over the past century, what “smart” means now, and what it might mean in the year 2020.
At the beginning of the 20th century, houses were electrified and the use of domestic appliances became commonplace such as the washing machine and upright vacuum. The automobile arrived, changing the design of cities and homes; and after WWII, lifestyles changed radically due to the advent of television. Towards the end of the 20th century, the digital revolution arrived, now accelerating and infiltrating almost every aspect of our lives.
It is inviting to reflect on historic notions of the “house of the future.” World's Fairs presented popular exhibits of innovative technologies. The Homes of Tomorrow Exhibition at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair predicted that houses in the future would have personal helicopter pads, all-steel construction, air-conditioning, and prefabricated components. In the mid-20th century, Buckminster Fuller presented his Dymaxion Home, a sheet metal kit house which was factory built and assembled on site. Exhibitions of futuristic domestic spaces such as Alison and Peter Smithson's House of the Future (1956) and the Monsanto House of the Future at Disneyland (1957) showed visitors the possibilities of fibreglass and other plastics in home construction, along with emerging features such as compact appliances, microwave ovens, colour televisions, and centrally conditioned air.
During the post-WWII housing boom, architects such as Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Eero Saarinen, and Richard Neutra worked on California Case Study houses -- a series of experimental model homes showcasing the possibilities of modern design and modern building materials. The British avant-garde group, Archigram, mounted an attack on the home as a permanent space, proposing mobile, networked cities and wearable, inflatable dwelling units such as the Suitaloon and Cushicle. Prominent architectural critic-historian, Reyner Banham, wrote at length about reducing the structural and mechanical systems of the house into a plastic bubble dome with an air-conditioning unit, the bubble being at once its own generator of structure and environment.
Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, a vast array of options are offered by home builders, employing advanced domestic technologies and materials. (One of the many commercial examples is the Smart Home Service by Samsung.) Stylistically, progressive contemporary designs coexist with retro-Victorian and Tudor stock. What you see on the outside is often quite different from the high-tech, performative interior. With the widespread use of smart phones and tablets, increasing concerns about climate change, and a movement toward low- or zero-carbon emissions in everyday life, innovating for the smart house of the future has meant multidisciplinary engagements with networking and information technologies, biomimetics, passive energy strategies, security systems, productive use of land, and fitness and healthy living components, all within the domestic sphere. Electric cars and easy access to public transportation systems are further impacting on notions of “smart”, particularly in the rapidly transforming suburbs.
Moreover, as both home automation and sustainability have become keywords in the everyday domesticity of the 21st century, they have engendered a shifting and indeterminate relationship between home and individual whereby the public culture of the digital and the private spaces of domestic life merge, creating new spatial networks and further transforming lifestyles.
July 18th, 2014
Stage One Deadline
5pm, September 3rd, 2014
Stage One Winners Announced
Early September, 2014
House 2020 Panel Discussion
December 9th, 2014
Stage Two Deadline
January 9th, 2015
Stage Two Jury
January 19th, 2015
Stage Two Winners Announced
January 20th, 2015
February 5th, 2015 to
April 31st, 2015
Three finalists will each be awarded $500 and invited to participate in Stage Two
Competition participants are encouraged to think openly and broadly about a smart house and changing life styles. For example, there is no fixed notion of family, number of occupants, or number of units on the site. Competitors can focus on certain categories of “smart” such as a) innovative land use planning and the creation of a community, b) building science including intelligent use of resources, energy conservation/production, and long-term sustainability, or c) technological innovation, efficiency, and convenience. Or she/he can take an approach that is comprehensive, addressing all of these categories. The house should be approximately 250 square metres (2500 square feet) to 400 square metres (4000 square feet) and imagined on a flat suburban site in Southern Ontario, 16 metres by 40 metres (52.5 feet by 131.25 feet), with similar lots continuing on either side.
WORKshop, Inc. is seeking ideas that are realizable, pragmatic, and cost-effective. In Stage One, students are invited to submit their proposal both digitally and on one A-1 sheet by Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014. A jury will then select three finalist projects for further development in Stage Two, which will be due at a date in the fall of 2014 to be determined.
Ted J. Kesik
Ted Kesik is professor of building science in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. He entered the construction industry in 1974 and has extensive experience in building enclosure design, energy modeling, systems integration, quality assurance, and performance verification. His research interests include high performance buildings, durability, life cycle assessment, systems integration, and sustainability. He continues as a consulting engineer to leading architectural offices, forward thinking enterprises, and progressive government agencies. Dr. Kesik is the author of numerous books, reports, and articles.
Carol Moukheiber, a graduate of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, is an Assistant Professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. She is a partner in the design practice Studio n-1 and the founder and co-Director of RAD, Responsive Architecture at Daniels, probing the impact of ubiquitous computing on architecture. She is the co-author of the living, breathing, thinking, responsive buildings of the future [Thames & Hudson 2012]. Her work has been published widely in academic and mainstream media.
Colin Ripley is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson University. He is also a director of RVTR (www.rvtr.com), which operates as a bridge between academic research practices and professional practices in architecture. RVTR has been extensively published and was awarded the 2009 Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture. Colin Ripley holds a Bachelor of Engineering from McMaster University, a Master of Science in theoretical physics from the University of Toronto, and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University.
A Hong Kong-based businessman and real estate developer turned designer, Kin Yeung established the luxury fashion brand, Blanc de Chine, in the late-1980s. He has long standing interests in architecture and was pioneering in developing The Octavia, a slender residential tower in Manhattan that won a Progressive Architecture design award. Kin Yeung founded
Toronto’s WORKshop centre in 2009 and continues to promote smart, responsible design,
from the scale of the body to the scale of the city.
WORKshop is a design centre located on the concourse level of 80 Bloor Street West in Yorkville, Toronto's celebrated retail and cultural quarter. Established in 2009 to reflect the vision of its founder, Kin Yeung, the centre includes a design studio, gallery, and retail shop, creating a platform for innovation by established and emerging designers.
Larry Wayne Richards
Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, and Creative Director, WORKshop, Inc.
Project Designer, WORKshop, Inc.