Walking Through Walls

Recently, the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) awarded 17 building industry professionals for excellence and innovation in green home building at the 10th Annual NAHB National Green Building Conference in New Orleans.

“These honorees are pioneers, artists and building scientists," said NAHB Sandy Dunn,president of NAHB and a home builder from Point Pleasant, West Virginia. "They've worked hard to bring sustainable building practices into the mainstream.  These winners are not afraid to put great ideas in motion."

Although not everyone in the industry can be recognized, there are companies not afraid to put great ideas into motion. According to the OPEN Prototype Initiative (OPI), the answer lies in the Open-Built® system of home construction.

For OPI, not all houses are created equal. OPI, a program of the MIT House_n Research Consortium, along with the help of Bensonwood Homes in Walpole, New Hampshire, and other industry partners, have set a goal to improve homebuilding across the country and to make homes more affordable, adaptable, and environmentally friendly. OPI developed a process that makes it possible to construct thousands of environmentally friendly Net-Zero homes, which produce as much energy as they consume).

"There are countless examples of green homes, but the industry has not developed a process to affordably mass produce these homes," said Kent Larson, director of the MIT House_n Research Consortium. "The OPEN Prototype Initiative has developed scalable processes, such as prefabrication and the separation of core services that, when followed, enable builders to create thousands of customizable Net-Zero homes that are being made more affordable right now."

Today's builders of tomorrow's homes are addressing a whole new reality: that to be truly durable and sustainable, houses should be able to adapt to homeowners' needs over time. A key ingredient that separates OPI’s homes and the building process from other green or prototype home projects, is the use of Open-Built(R) principles. Open-Built(R) thinking takes a layered approach to building, with each layer defined by its life span and anticipated need for future alteration.

The homes resulting from this process are built rapidly and with minimal waste. Homeowners can easily move or remove walls and fixtures, access swiftly evolving technologies or adapt the home to the changing needs of the occupants.

OPEN_1, the first house built by OPI, used green building concepts such as energy-efficient wall, window, roof, and lighting systems; advanced tracking of energy use; and provisions for the best possible indoor air quality. The design and construction processes of the Open-Built system demonstrate off-site fabrication of integrated systems for plumbing, heating and cooling, and exterior siding. Off-site pre-finishing of construction elements allows for faster on-site assembly and thousands of pounds of less waste and debris.

The second home being built by the OPI, dubbed "Unity House," is the on-campus home for the president of Unity College. Unity College is a small school in Unity, Maine, with an environmentally focused curriculum.

The house will serve as a single family residence, an on-campus meeting and entertaining space, as well as a classroom -- all possible because of Open-Built technologies.Designed for Net-Zero energy use, the 1,930 square foot home will achieve LEED Platinum standards, featuring a photovoltaic (PV) solar panel array, and also will be a living classroom for college students.

Unity House can be altered at its core, allowing walls to be moved or removed with the use of simple tools. Preproduction in a controlled shop environment improves the quality of the home while reducing on-site waste. Goals for the entire Unity House project include producing less than three barrels of on-site waste and completing on-site construction in only 20 working days.

The architects/designers for Unity House are Hilary Harris and Randall Walter of Bensonwood Homes, with input from Kent Larson at MIT. "Very few people have the ability today to design and build a home that meets their needs," says Harris. "Beyond just outlining a way to affordably build green homes, this initiative shows we can and should be building homes that can fit the needs of the homeowner, rather than forcing them to live within the current design of the house. What good is a green home if it can't adapt to change?"