FIU students in national finals of sustainable design competition


Two FIU graduate students are among 49 finalists nationally in the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) 2010 Natural Talent Design Competition. Sponsored in partnership with the Salvation Army’s EnviRenew Initiative, the contest is focused on the rebuilding effort in New Orleans.

Master’s architecture students Mabel Lanza and Katiuska Merino will find out by Aug. 30 whether their designs are among the final four selected for construction in New Orleans’ Broadmoor neighborhood.

Participants were asked to design a small, affordable home for an elderly client in Broadmoor. Home designs could not exceed 880 square feet and $100,000 in constructions costs, and they had to meet requirements for Platinum LEED certification. Designs needed to be in keeping with the Broadmoor aesthetic of shotgun-style housing and in compliance with post-Katrina flood elevation criteria.

To make it to the national competition, the 49 finalists won local, chapter-based competitions that featured more than 360 entries. Competitors were divided into two groups – students and emerging professionals.

In an extraordinary show of design force, FIU students swept the Student Category of the USGBC South Florida Chapter, winning the top three spots and beating out participants from the University of Miami, among other competitors. Placing first was Merino. Graduate architecture student Ed Seymour came in second, and the FIU duo of Amir Melloul and Michele Markovits took third.

Lanza mistakenly entered her design in the Louisiana Chapter’s competition. Her first-place award set up the unusual circumstance of having two FIU students in the national finals.

The 49 designs still in contention are now being assessed by a national jury. Two student designs and two emerging professional designs will be selected and announced at the end of August.

The winning designs will be built in the Broadmoor neighborhood. Once the homes are constructed and homeowners have moved in, the structures will enter a measurement and verification phase to monitor their energy efficiency, water reuse and indoor air quality, among other categories. The designer whose home performs the best during measurement and verification will be awarded the final grand prize in 2011.

Contest organizers believe that financially vulnerable individuals and families are especially in need of the benefits that green building practices provide. Healthy indoor air quality, lower utility bills and high quality construction are vitally important to moderate- and low-income populations in their quest for economically prosperous lifestyles.

News.fiu.edu sat down with the winning students and architecture professors Marilys Nepomechie, Camilo Rosales and Thomas Spiegelhalter, who led the design studios that were dedicated exclusively to the study of sustainable design practices. In the video they discuss their designs, the competition and what this strong showing means to FIU.

— Karen Cochrane