A team of seven students (Levi Hooten, Daniel Luster, Ramune Matuliauskaite-Morales, Samuel Mortimer, Bethany Wild, Joan Monaco, and Thomas Herbert) won top honors in 2009 at the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Sustainable Design Expo held in Washington, DC, in April 2009. The competition focused on benefiting people, promoting prosperity, and protecting the environment (P3). Around 40 teams competed, and UT’s was one of six (Drexel, South Florida, MIT, Columbia, University of Arizona, and UT) receiving top awards in the Phase II competition.
The UT entry was a 12-foot by 12-foot mock-up of “The New Norris House: A Sustainable Home for the 21st Century,” a contemporary interpretation of a historic home design featured in the Norris, Tennessee, community in the 1930s. The prize was a grant that could partially defray the expense of constructing such a home. Tim Ezzell, project principal investigator and director of the Community Partnerships Center, and Tricia Smith, assistant professor in the College of Architecture and Design, served as faculty mentors on the project. Prefabrication of the 750-square-foot bungalow to be placed on a small lot in Norris began at the Clayton Homes factory in September 2010.
The house features an open, vaulted space and an overhang that extends beyond the width of the house. It also features a collection system that allows rainwater to be used for toilets, showers, and clothes washing, and then to be recovered and returned to the environment; a thermal solar water heater; a high efficiency heat pump; ductless heating and cooling; and a ventilation system that uses a heat exchanger to recover the heat or cold from the air before releasing it outdoors. Students chose not to install a dishwasher and to install a smaller-than-normal refrigerator to take advantage of energy and space savings. Total cost of the house was anticipated to be $350,000 to $400,000.
In March 2011 the project won a National Council of Architectural Registration Board prize for “Creative Integration of Practice and Education in the Academy.” The project competed with 45 other projects. The project won a 2012 Residential Architect Merit Award for Single-Family Housing, the 2013 Design Build Award, and in 2013 was named among the Top 10 Green Projects by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. In 2014 it earned a National Honor Award for Research from the American Society of Landscape Architects.
After a one-year demonstration and evaluation period, the house became a living laboratory for two research students, who lived in the house and measured some of the energy systems, prior to the sale of the house.
On March 2, 2014, UT announced that the house would be sold, in a sealed-bid process, for a minimum of $155,000. An open house for potential bidders was held April 12, and bids were received through 2:30 p.m., May 5.