Architect Stephen Bender with MWBa LLC., Gretel Castillo, and Lance Moore (aka Co-tain) recently finished a proposal for the AIA Competition to design a Case Study House for Florida. The competition aimed to re-define the notion of the ‘Florida House’ for the 21st century and called for the design of a sustainable 1500 square foot single family home that could withstand the harsh Florida climate while staying affordable. More images and Architects’ description after the break.
The site requirements where quite compact with a 30-130 and 50-150 and harsh setbacks to top it off. We chose to adopt a hybrid of shipping container and conventional construction and would use a total of five shipping containers, 4 twentys and 1 forty, that held the private components of the project. The containers would be prefabricated off site and we designed in a way to reduce the need for cuts and extra reinforcement. We placed the containers in a way so that we could utilize the interstitial space left between the arrangement for the main living and dinning area.
The conventional construction would consist of structural insulated panels, basic aluminum, and steel members. The project is full of sustainable features a couple are a green wall system which creates a false facade, this will allow the air space between to be cycled out keeping the containers cool throughout the day. The containers are connected to the conventional core which is fitted with solar chimneys that allow the home to be naturally ventilated and can hold photovoltaic panels.
The key to the project is its price. We were able to keep the project’s affordability goal and bottomed out at 59.97 dollars a square-foot bringing the construction cost to around 98,830.
