Who’s Next 2.0

The Challenge:
Freegreen.com is challenging you to help us define the design concept of Affordable Luxury. Gone are the days of free-flowing mortgages, and multi-million dollar McMansions. In this "new normal" home owners still desire livable, ascetically pleasing, and luxurious homes, but now need these same concepts implemented into smaller more affordable residential structures. This creates the perfect opportunity for the design community to take charge of this challenge and be the first to create new home designs, and design delivery methods that meet today's restraints and requirements.

Competitors will select one of two user profiles and design a single family home that fits their chosen profile. Competitors will be able to design for a lot of their creation, but will be asked to identify the Climate Region that their entry is designed for, which will help the public and our jury better determine performance benefits. Affordability and Constructability is a key in this contest so all entries should be targeted for an eventual construction cost of $220,000 to $410,000 (The Range of Regional Average New Home Costs, U.S. Census, New Residential Sales Data, 2009).

To Learn More see our video below and visit http://www.freegreen.com/whosnext/
 

It's Easy
All you have to deliver is nine images and image descriptions. No boards, no presentations, no complications. Just nine slides that will be uploaded in a Facebook style onto the competition website.

It's Affordable
Our entry fee is just $50. Our goal is to get, and promote as many entrants as possible so we created and entry fee that is manageable.

It's Useful
There is of course $7,000 in total cash prizes.

This is not a just a contest it is a marketing platform. In our last Who’s Next Contest our entrants designs were viewed over 1,000,000 times. The entrants received over 30,000 votes, and 15,000 user comments.

Yes you can really get work by entering Who’s Next. All of our Top 3 in the last Who’s Next Contest received real projects to work with clients on their design entries. We also received notes from over 20 other entrants telling us about work that came from their efforts.

As you will see on our Public Voting site, we promote the “for-sale” house plans of our past winners soon to be put up for-sale at Better House Plans.

It's Impactful
In 2009, Americans began construction on 445,000 single family homes. About 30% of these homes were built from stock house plans. In comparison only about 3%-5% were built using modular (or typically know as "pre-fab") systems. This means if we as designers want to impact the built world beyond the limitation of custom architecture, we must work together to increase the quality and performance of the house plan industry.

Are You Next?  http://www.freegreen.com/whosnext/