Graduate architecture students Gary Vincent and Eric Haskins are among the winners of the Potomac Valley Brick’s first international sustainable architectural design competition, Brick-Sustainable. The competition, open to students and professionals, was an assignment in Stephen Dent’s Design and Technology graduate studio. Vincent and Haskins’ design won in the whole building design category.
Potomac Valley Brick launched its design competition to find innovative ideas to showcase brick in sustainable new design uses. They received 95 entries from 18 countries. “We actively involve students in competitions to hone their skills and gauge their abilities against other students and professionals alike,” Dent said
Participants were asked to address issues of net-zero energy, material innovation, use of brick as a primary thermal material and the design challenges of creating a diplomatic campus near Camp David. The design was for both residential and meeting facilities.
“I set up the competition as a class assignment because it was a net-zero energy project – the design had to relate to environmental performance,” Dent said. He said brick is not used much regionally.
Vincent appreciated working with a different material and designing for a different climate. He said, “It forces you back to the fundamentals of the design process rather than relying on what you’ve seen and done before. One key to our success was focusing on the material and the site climate, and how they both informed the building – what made the building a brick building, rather than any other material, and why did it belong on that site?”
The students worked in teams. “With an overlay of construction and environmental issues, graduate students wouldn’t be able to complete a design alone, but they could as a team. They learned to work collaboratively, as it is done in the profession,” Dent said. Vincent and Haskins were a good team. “They were successful because they had complementary skills and a good working relationship.”
PVB is flying the six winning entrants to Washington, D.C. to take part in the awards ceremony and presenting them each with a $2,000 cash prize.