DC Metrocentric

Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

Friday I went down to the National Mall to take a look at the Solar Decathlon houses. I guess the most shocking thing I observed was how normal each of the houses were. On a related note, I was impressed with how “un-student like” they were. None of them looked like student studio projects, i.e. amateur.

With the exceptions of the entries from Cornell (pictured) and Spain which were more like architectural follies than real small footprint houses, any one of them could have been featured on the pages of a mainstream architecture magazine; Cornell and Spain’s entries could be found within the pages of any avant-garde architecture magazine.

This year, it was evident that most of the houses were designed with mainstream marketability in mind. Most of the houses were designed around a contemporary aesthetic and open plan arrangement, while others like the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Louisiana Lafayette referred to localized American Vernacular styles. The forms of the houses were primarily long thin rectangles, some had courts, while others had breezeways, but in total they were designed according to market standards for handicap accessibility and for mass production. This plan of public accessibility and marketability was definitely working. The grounds were extremely crowded and the lines to enter the winning houses wound down the main walk. Inside, the houses were obviously over maximum occupancy, and the crowds were really excited by what they saw. I overheard endless questions about fixtures and furniture from the most unlikely guests. As far as engineering performance goes, each house had its own gimmick…

Penn State had phase change insulation in the walls, Iowa State had its solar room and The University of Arizona had its Tromm Wall, but overall they mostly used off the shelf readily available passive and active solar design like SIP’s and pre-manufactured Photovoltaic arrays.

What was the most striking in the engineering field was not what the teams did, but what they weren’t allowed to do, which was re-use gray water (waste water from non-sanitary means) or rainwater within the dwelling. Many of the houses had been designed with systems to reuse water, but the DC plumbing code forbids the use of gray or rain water for any domestic purpose except landscaping. Apparently, in many jurisdictions across the country using any water besides well water or municipal water for domestic uses is prohibited. The students at many of the houses made it a point to tell the crowds about their water reduction features and the specific reason why they couldn’t use it and encouraged people to contact their representatives to change this ordinance.

Overall, I think the houses from this year’s Solar Decathlon really stressed that not only are environmentally responsible and energy self sufficient homes possible, but with the right architectural and engineering choices they are marketable and economical. I hope that some of the guests at the competition also took away one of the hidden messages in the competition; it is not only possible, but both responsible and luxurious to live in a small well defined space. Unfortunately, after hearing many of the guests refer to the architectural features of the buildings as “wonderful engineering” I have little hope that this competition will neither help the public understand what architects do nor emphasize the importance of hiring an architect for domestic projects, which is a shame. Without the work of future architects (the architecture students involved in this competition) the public would have been occupying aesthetically uninspiring boxes that performed amazingly, but whose firmness, commodity or delight would have occurred by accident.

Spencer Lepler is an Architect who has lived in Northern Virginia since 2005. He posts on here and on a semi-regular basis to his blog – selophane.com; he can also be found as a contributing writer on greatergreaterwashington.org. In addition to writing he has a design studio with fellow DC area designer Andrew Merlo – studioSML.com and is on the executive board of Dominion Stage. You can follow him on twitter @selophane and @studioSML.