Student teams vie for victory at local sustainable building design competition
Appalachian State University students from the Department of Technology participated in the local competition of the North Carolina Sustainable Building Design Competition (NCSBDC) April 10 in Katherine Harper Hall on the Appalachian campus.
The competition’s focus is to engage students in the state’s universities colleges and community colleges to learn and apply the lessons of sustainable design and construction. By participating in this program, all students become better prepared to incorporate sustainable design methods into their work and to bring this experience to the design and construction professions. Advanced Energy coordinates this annual competition.
This year’s competition challenges students to design a sustainable duplex home that will be built and replicated by Carolina Meadows, a continuing care retirement development, located in Chapel Hill.
“This competition is an excellent way to help students realize everyone can take actions toward an environmentally sustainable future,” said Appalachian Technology professors Chad Everhart, AIA, and Don Woodruff, AIA. “Through this competition teams practice applying green building principles in a real-world setting that forces them to take into consideration the cost and practicality of designing a home.”
First place winners Scott Hopkins, Aaron Parker, Clay Pratt and Jimmy Williams took home a $200 cash prize and will head to the state competition. The second place winners Ryan Hunter, Staley Brown, Brandon Walsh and John Davidson will join the first place team in competing for a statewide title.
The winning team of the statewide competition will have their design built and receive $3,000. The team that places first in the state competition will go on to compete in the national U.S. Green Building Council Natural Talent Design Competition where they will contend against student teams and professional design firms from across the nation.
Honorable mentions went to one team composed of Hunter Cameron, Caroline House, Will Guenther, Chris Dimaio and Aimee Clark, as well as another team that included Matt Johnson, Brandon Dodds, Emily Vidovich, Zach Smithey and Andrew Sams.
Some of the many organizations and individuals that have helped make this program successful include Advanced Energy, Architectural Energy Corporation, Building Green, Calloway Johnson Moore & West, P.A., Carolina Meadows, N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, Progress Energy, Touchstone Energy Cooperatives of North Carolina and Triangle Emerging Green Builders.
To learn more, visit www.sustainabledesigncompetition.org.