The Ontario Association of Architects has recognized Taubman College Associate Professor Geoff Thün and Assistant Professor Kathy Velikov’s professional practice RVTR with a 2010 Award of Design Excellence for their project North House. The North House project is one of a series of active funded research projects led by RVTR that seeks to lever the potential relationships between applied academic research, industry partnerships, and the transformation of design education through intensive immersion for student participants in collaborative and interdisciplinary team-based design projects that lead to constructed prototypes.

North House involved student and faculty collaboration across a range of disciplines including architecture, mechanical and electrical engineering, systems design, computer interface design and mechatronics engineering, to develop an 800-square-foot net, energy-producing prefabricated solar home prototype for northern climate applications. The work is currently in its second generation at Taubman College, involving M.Arch. graduate research assistants developing multiple scales of residential application for the project’s modular assembly components, high efficiency glazing systems, and digitally fabricated light and acoustic diffusing ceiling systems.

Thün and Velikov will present research work associated with this project at several international venues in Japan and Scandinavia during the summer of 2010 as part of travel and dissemination funded through the Canadian Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture and the Canada Council for the Arts, awards previously granted.

For more information on the OAA Awards Program, click here.