‘Afterhouse’ wins Architect R+D award
Afterhouse, a project by Associate Professor Steven Mankouche, artist Abigail Murray and Archolab with Lecturer Jono Sturt, won a 2014 Architect magazine R&D award.
According to juror Mimi Love, “This is a clever and hopeful submission, considering the number of neighborhoods in Detroit with which nobody knows what to do but turn out the lights and walk away.”
Their design has a simple and inexpensive premise, to repurpose the concrete foundation of a derelict house as a sunken greenhouse that stays warm through solar heat gain and the insulation of the earth to grow subtropical crops. Their test site is an abandoned, fire-damaged house in Detroit, just north of the embedded city of Hamtramck.
According to the judges, this year’s R+D Award winners stood out for, “potential to inject architecture with intelligence, upgrade longstanding manufacturing and construction methods, and overhaul entire streetscapes and cities. They weren’t only about making things, they were also about solving human-scale problems.”
Taubman College students who participated on the project include: Travis Williams (B.S.’15), Chance Heath (M.Arch.’15), Edward Sachs (B.S.’15), Joseph Danelko/strong> (M.Arch.’15), and Daniel Sebaldt (M.Arch.’15). For a complete list of project credits visit the Afterhouse award article on Archinect.
