News Flash: Illinois Team Wins Market Viability

October 18, 2007

News Flash: This morning, 150 points were on the line with the announcement of the Market Viability contest. Marketability, affordability, and buildability, all important considerations for the housing market, are measured and evaluated as part of this contest.

The juried portion of the contest evaluates market appeal. Those jurors are Jim Ketter with the Tierra Group, Doug Lowe of Artisan Construction, Joyce Mason of Pardee Homes, and Bob Burt of Burt Construction Services, who presented the awards this morning.

The placings for the Market Viability contest are:

1st Place, University of Illinois, 114.35 points
2nd Place, University of Maryland, 112.5 points
3rd Place, Penn State, 109.95 points

Posted at 11:05 AM in Daily Journal | Permalink

You have made a gross mistake. IF affordability and buildability truely are taken into account in the decision for Market Viability then eyes must have been closed. To overlook teams with homes that were ACTUALLY reasonably priced, were built 100% by students with NO construction experience (thus enforcing the buildability of a design), and took into account the broad range of needs in the housing market with a flexable design is blasphemous. To award a school a ranking of 5th with a house with a $2,000,000.00 US pricetag, and with the same hand penalize schools with a home that costs less than $300,000.00 is not in keeping with the spirit of sustainability.

Where is the sustainable sense of moral in such an exorbitantly priced home. The homes are less than 800 square feet, where is the accountability? There is a major flaw in this competition when such accountability does not exist.

Posted by: A | October 18, 2007 at 01:31 PM

Unfortunately, the Illinois team's website does a very poor effort at communicating how viable there house is. In my opinion, Market Viability and Communication go hand in hand. If a consumer where to go to there team's website, I would venture to say that they would get lost before finding this information.

Moreover, the team does little to share the blueprint information necessary for knowledge transfer, which should be a signficant component of this contest. I would like to encourage the Illinois team to update their website and share this information.

Thanks!

Posted by: Ed Gaviria | October 18, 2007 at 01:46 PM

I'll be brief. The contest does not specify who the target market has to be. If a team chooses to market their house to high income individuals and does a good job marketing to them, then they should score well. Each team has a different market in mind.
I do agree that the cost needs to come down and that cost should be scored. However, limiting cost would limit the potential for innovation which is one of the goals of this competition.
The cost to get to the mall using a prototype is not a direct reflection of the final design cost of the home. When scaled up to a 3 BR home the cost may be comparable to a high end custom home.

Posted by: Tom | October 18, 2007 at 05:09 PM

Boo, Boo and more Boos! Affordability and buildability is clearly an issue and a judging criteria, your jury clearly missed the mark on this one!

Posted by: Mark Talmadge | October 18, 2007 at 07:08 PM

Can you list the cost of each house and which ones were 100% student built?

Posted by: Kathryn | October 18, 2007 at 08:13 PM

The team from Lawrence provides detailed costs here: http://solar.ltu.edu/2_cost.php

Posted by: Martin Courtois | October 18, 2007 at 09:05 PM

Texas A&M was student built, and I am sure there were others. There is something to be said for something that can be built by students. It means there is a high viability for the average consumer. Any architect can design something expensive. It takes even more talent to provide an elegant design that is attainable to the masses.

Overall, isn't this contest intended to promote the adoption of solar and related technologies? An extremely expensive price tag doesn't do anything to move the world forward as whole....in my humble opinion.

Posted by: Jenn | October 18, 2007 at 09:56 PM

I second Kathryn's request here. I know that a number of teams list detailed costs on their websites, but not all of them do - including the apparently very costly solar house which was cited above as costing $2,000,000 (at least, I couldn't find it on the site...). I think that I remember reading a comment on the site here about how visitors to the houses saw the price tags, but not all of us can visit the homes in DC.

I had no idea that there wasn't a spending cap on these houses...

Posted by: Elliot | October 18, 2007 at 11:58 PM

Actually the contest shows the priorities (i.e. more points for architecture, than for engineering, or market viability). Building prototypes is a useful exercise to demontrate creative thinking. If you want marketable, affordable units go talk to a contractor. What we need is to make the solar option more like a production line and less of a craft.

Posted by: Jim Hayes | October 28, 2007 at 05:07 PM

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