The HOME House Project

Selected designs and essays document a multiyear national design initiative aimed at creating sustainable and environmentally-friendly low- and moderate-income housing. Imagine affordable homes that are both well-designed and environmentally friendly, better for the families who live in them and for the planet. The HOME House Project brings such imagining closer to reality. This book chronicles a multi-year national design initiative aimed at addressing issues of design, affordability, and sustainability in housing. Launched by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this project challenged designers and architects to imagine a world in which sustainable and environmentally friendly materials, technologies, and techniques were considered important elements of housing for low- and moderate-income families. A SECCA-sponsored open competition in 2003 drew 440 entries from the United States and six other countries, all using Habitat for Humanity's three- and four-bedroom house plans as a point of departure for the design of affordable and environmentally friendly housing. This book, published in conjunction with a traveling exhibition, documents the 25 prize-winning designs as well as fifty other selected submissions with 396 color illustrations. The accompanying text includes Michael Sorkin's essay connecting democratic values to quality of housing, Ben Nicholson's satiric critique of American excess, Steve Badanes's insights on the social responsibilities of architects, and HOME House Project Director David Brown's overview of the project and its continuing evolution.