SCAD architecture professors win international competition

By: Melissa Wheeler

Published: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 in The Chronicle

Link: http://www.thecampuschronicle.com/features/articles/071127b.cfm

Two professors in the Savannah College of Art and Design architecture department won first place in an international competition focused on creating sustainable and self-sufficient homes.

Dihua Yang and Ming Tang were selected out of 1,100 competitors from 90 countries, who submitted a total of 255 proposals to the International Self-sufficient Housing Competition from the Second Advanced Architecture Contest sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.

Entries were judged by a renowned group of architects, including Yung Ho Chang, chair of the architecture department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Grey Lynn, a forerunner in exploring the possibilities of digital fabrication. Lynn, who teaches at the University of California-Los Angeles, was profiled by Time Magazine in their projection of 21st-century innovators in architecture and design.

Yang and Tang’s winning design used traditional local material and implemented geometry elements in a way that would allow structures to transform and reform themselves. The jury commended their design’s landscape integration and the possibility it could be constructed as a prototype.

"Since the central feature of our bamboo house is the potential of re-arranging 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.