In houses as in people, looks aren’t everything, but in an architectural design competition they come pretty close. For 15 years this magazine has sponsored the annual Custom Home Design Awards, showcasing some of the finest residential architecture that the country has to offer. Over the years, our winners have included many houses designed with environmental sustainability in mind. We have also given awards to houses that were designed, frankly, as if green considerations did not exist. In short, our judges have taken each project on its own terms. But in matters of energy cost, resource depletion, and climate change, the ground is shifting rapidly. To date, we have not established a green standard for design award entries, but should we? Are aesthetics and environmental responsibility mutually exclusive values, or can a design award jury consider both at once? We asked architects with experience on both sides of the judges’ table to weigh in and found that we are not alone in mulling such questions.
Seattle-area architect Jim Cutler, who won two 2008 Custom Home Design Awards, says that evaluating the success of a building—whether in sustainability or aesthetics—always requires that judges look deeper than the surface. A house may be pretty, Cutler says, “but why did they make it pretty? What’s the purpose? If they’re doing it just to be pretty, that’s pretty shallow.” Judges should take the same approach with sustainability, he says. “Energy is important, but what is the tradeoff? We could all just live underground, where we have a nice steady 54 degrees, but we would become disconnected.” Somewhere between the insulated bunker and the glass bubble lies an appropriate balance. But that balance is tricky to find, and perhaps even trickier to judge in the work of other architects.
In his firm’s own work, Cutler says, “We try to maximize the energy efficiency of the building, but not at the expense of the connection to the planet. The real issue here is getting people to love the planet. An emotional connection to the planet is the first step in saving the planet.” Windows that open onto an inspiring view allow more precious heat to escape from a building than would a blank, insulated wall. But what they allow in may be of even greater value. “I think [efficiency] is important,” Cutler says, “but you have to get into it in a much more subtle way.”
