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Cradle to Cradle (C2C) - Winning Design

Posted: 15/06/2005

Architects and planners from Seattle have won the international C2C (Cradle to Cradle) Home Design and Construction Competition with a submission chosen from more than 625 from 41 countries. The competition honors the sharpest cutting-edge innovation in sustainable residential design. Inspired by the seminal 2002 book by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart, “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things,” the competition asked entrants to design a home that would reflect the new paradigm and vision of sustainability outlined in that book.

Those standards are based on the premise that the “three Rs,” reduce, reuse, recycle – all preferred alternatives to simply dumping waste – are mere Band-Aids. McDonough and Braungart say we should instead eliminate waste in the first place, by crafting our modern systems and patterns of living to more closely mimic natural systems, where waste does not exist. The first place-winning home design doesn’t just eliminate waste in its operation; it creates energy to share – with neighbors and its community at large.
“Our goal is for this project to be a catalyst for community-integrated, sustainable design on a local and then global scale,” said project team co-leader Matthew Coates.

How the Winning Design Works
Coates and Tim Meldrum led a seven-member team of architects and planners to design a one-storied, L-shaped home whose central feature re-interprets an age-old concept: the hearth. The hearth once provided vital heat for warmth, cooking and light. Yet today, it has devolved into an ornament known as the fireplace.

To return to a hearth based on these new principles, Coates and Meldrum’s team re-envisioned it. Their hearth, a tapered, two-story, chimney-like core, includes mechanisms for rainwater collection, black and gray water treatment, a heat sink, a ventilation stack, a skylight and structural support for solar energy collection materials. The core consolidates these systems, which leverage the sun, wind, and water, Sun. “Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It is collected and returned,” according to team member Brendan Connolly, emphasizing the importance of balance between the natural and the man-made.

While the house uses timeless passive solar strategies to deflect summer rays while absorbing the winter sun’s heat, it also employs astounding innovation to harness energy. The building core extends vertically, like a chimney, above the roof plane, and serves as a louvered skylight and a temperature-stabilizing heat sink while supporting a revolutionary cladding: a super-conductive material that produces photosynthetic energy generated from the protein in spinach. Based on emerging technology and scientific research, cells of spinach protein, sandwiched between glass, has the potential to generate substantially more energy than regular photovoltaics, much more than the home’s residents need.
The additional energy may be fed to neighbors’ homes, street lighting, or simply back to the power grid. Currently available photovoltaic panels may also be attached to the core, until phototropic, spinach-based cladding is technically feasible.

“The energy of a plant’s chlorophyll gives back to our energy cycle, supporting our health and our ability to propagate. This interdependency is the crux of Cradle to Cradle, thinking beyond our own life time and lifecycle,” Coates added.
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