Vote for Your favorite Green Building Designs for New Orleans

All 6 finalists responded in different ways to our goal of demonstrating how green design and good design can be brought to together in an innovative way, thus ensuring that housing is truly affordable and healthy. All of the selected designs express a clear understanding of the need to address rising electricity and energy costs and mounting health problems caused by exposure to unhealthy building practices. Healthy, energy efficient homes and affordable housing often have no or little increased cost (0% to 2%), yet provide a vast benefits through lower energy and water bills, increased durability, and improved health of the residents.

Global Green USA and their technical jury note that the designs selected are works in progress, and Global Green staff and other members of the technical jury will work with the finalists to improve and refine their green building ideas to ensure they are cost-effective and resource-efficient manner, and specific to the climate and culture of New Orleans and Holy Cross.

All finalists will work with the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association to present and refine their plans by soliciting further neighborhood input and incorporating needs of the neighborhood. Final plans will be presented at the end of August to the jury and neighborhood.

Voting is now closed.

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116 - On the River Brininstool and Lynch/Brad Lynch - Chicago, IL Designer's project description Green features: Taking full and creative advantage of the site's close proximity of the Mississippi River, this design includes smart use of cooling winds that come over the levee and maximizes natural daylight, strategies that are both energy efficient and cost-saving for the residents. The layout of the buildings is simple yet sensible, creating a nice shared space for the residents, and neighborhood The design raises the living areas off the ground, important for preparation and passive survivability for future flooding. The project features creative ideas about energy generation placing solar electric arrays on a barge in the adjacent Mississippi river -- that may be challenging to implement, but responded to the competitions goal of identifying ways to use the features in the area around the site to produce energy.		217 – The Levee Drew Lang Architects/Drew Lang - NYC, NY and New Orleans, LA Designer's project description Green features: This smart yet clean design takes advantage of natural cooling through common sense but often neglected strategies - building overhangs for shading and cross ventilation to cool the homes. The building is designed with trellises made of recycled plastic. Plants grown on the trellises will reduce the buildings cooling costs and energy needs. Including the caf in the community center responds to the request that the designs address the economic and social needs of the community needs, as well as environmental concerns concepts key to sustainable design and the goals of Global Green and Brad Pitt. The natural systems are augmented by a smart and efficient closed loop geothermal system - a natural cooling and heating system - for the building.
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226 - NOLA shotgunLOFT Schwartz Architecture/Frederic Schwartz - NYC, NY Designer's project description Green Features: This creative adaptation of the traditional and historic New Orleans shotgun homes utilizes modular construction and fabrication approach for the buildings which can be efficient, cost effective, and as designed here, sustainable. The buildings are placed efficiently on the site thus creating opportunities to beautify the grounds and provide local production of food for the residents (e.g., community gardens, orchards, and open space). The designers used a strategy to effectively help cool the buildings (solar chimneys that draw out the heat through the natural convection process), that will dramatically reduce energy use as well as planted trellises and trees will help to reduce the increased heat from the sun. The designers gave thought to how to finance the projects, proposing a self-help/sweat equity financial model.		196 - Rebuild Renew - Sustainable Design for the Holy Cross District MetroStudio - New Orleans Designer's project description Green Features: This entry celebrates and uses several common sense, traditional features of New Orleans development to help cool the buildings and protect the residents: Buildings oriented and designed well for natural ventilation, while leaving room for growing food or gardens. Raising buildings – as was traditional -- allows for ventilation beneath buildings and protects the living space in the event of future flooding Covered porches provide natural cooling of the homes and create a popular social area for residents. The placement of the solar panels is innovative in that the panels: help achieve the net zero energy goal; shade the buildings from the afternoon sun, and protect the residents from high winds in hurricanes. The design incorporates community vegetable gardens and includes rainwater collection system as part of small park.
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169 - GreeN.O.LA Workshop APD/Matthew Berman and Andrew Kotchen - NYC, NY Designer's project description Green Features: This is a well thought out and integrated approach to ecological design. The result is a project that reduces energy demand, resulting in lower energy bills for those that live in the homes. The designers used a smart and efficient approach to energy using a heating and cooling system that combines natural ventilation with a geothermal system. The project features an innovative rainwater collection and recycling system, which reduces the potential for neighborhood flooding, provides resiliency in the event of future disasters, and provides environmental benefit. The planted trellises will help to cool the buildings and provide the residents an additional benefit that is aesthetically pleasing.		218 - Breathe Eskew, Dumez and Ripple - New Orleans Designer's project description Green Features: The site design and building orientation makes for an efficient solar energy system. The solar systems includes both electricity (photovoltaics) and solar hot water heater that can meet much of the hot water needs for this site. The community garden will be accessible to those living in the homes, and the rest of the neighborhood, connecting the project to the community in a friendly way. The team included wetlands as natural filtration systems, using one of nature’s best techniques to deal with pollution. The proposed river turbines as a means of generating electricity is innovative, and if feasible could help produce clean, renewable energy for the whole neighborhood and electricity if power went out in future hurricanes.

Global Green USA would like to thank the many people who have made the Sustainable Design Competition for New Orleans possible thus far:

    - The sponsors of the Sustainable Design Competition: Brad Pitt, Adam Joseph Lewis, Suzanne Friewald, and Sean Cummings

    - The Home Depot Foundation whose early support for Global Green's work in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast has been critical.

    - The design jury (see the Overview page to see names and affiliations) and the technical jury, including the US Green Building Council and the AIA).

    - The competition design team, including Jones/Kroloff and John Williams of New Orleans, along with dozens of volunteers, friends and supporters in New Orleans who have embraced our work in New Orleans for the past 9 months.