International Self-Sufficient Housing Competition Awards First Place to Two SCAD Professors

SAVANNAH, Ga., Dec. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/—Two Savannah College of Art and Design architecture professors won first prize in an international competition focused on sustainable and self-sufficient housing. The competition featured contestants from 90 countries and was sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.

More than 1,100 competitors from around the world competed in the contest titled “The Second Advanced Architecture Contest International Competition: Self Sufficient Housing - The Self Fab House.” Of the 225 proposals submitted, SCAD professors Dihua Yang and Ming Tang were selected by a panel of jurors for first prize.

Yang and Tang’s winning design used traditional local material, implementing geometry elements in a pertinent way, creating structures able to transform and reform themselves. The jury recognized the design’s landscape integration and the possibility of it being constructed as a prototype.

“[As] the central feature of our bamboo house is the potential of rearranging it into various contexts, I hope this prototype could be modified and constructed by users in other locations, based on their unique local requirements and adapted to fit sustainable strategy,” Tang said.

Entries were judged by a renowned group of architects, including Yung Ho Chang, chair of the architecture department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Grey Lynn, one of the forerunners in exploring the possibilities of digital fabrication.

To view images of the winning design created by Yang and Tang, or for more information on the competition visit http://www.iaacblog.com/AAC2007-finalists/.

About the college

Named one of Kaplan’s “25 cutting-edge schools with an eye toward the future,” the Savannah College of Art and Design is a private, nonprofit, accredited institution with locations in Atlanta and Savannah, Ga., and in Lacoste, France. Undergraduate and graduate degree programs also are offered online through SCAD-eLearning. The college offers Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Architecture, Master of Arts, Master of Arts in Teaching, Master of Fine Arts, and Master of Urban Design degrees. For more information about the college, visit http://www.scad.edu/.