by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
Four architecture students from UNM will get an opportunity to have one of their designs built.
Student Eliza Linde, who helped with the design, said the construction will be a valuable experience.
"It's so different to do something on paper or on the computer than it is to do it in real life," she said.
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Construction on a 1,500 square-foot, five-bedroom house will begin in March in Valencia County's Habitat for Humanity development.
The design was chosen in a competition with 10 entries and five finalists.
The contest was organized by UNM and Habitat for Humanity to design a house that will accommodate a larger number of people in a relatively small space, said Geraldine Isais, an architecture professor and a judge for the contest.
The collaboration between Habitat for Humanity and UNM is good for everyone involved, she said.
"These kinds of collaborations can be a win-win situation for nonprofits and educational institutions in general," she said. "It allows them to get a better quality design, and it allows our students to get some experience."
Kevin Cronk, director of Valencia County's Habitat for Humanity, agreed.
"What Habitat's gotten out of it is the ability to think outside the box and bring new ideas to the table," he said.
What made the winning design stand out was the thoughtfulness that went into it, Isais said.
"This project was more synthetic in that they tried to address all the issues that they possibly could," she said.
Achieving that synthesis was not easy, Linde said.
"The biggest challenge was taking all these things into consideration and wrapping it into one house," she said.
The design tried to make the relatively small house comfortable for six or seven people to live in, she said. One concern was providing adequate privacy, while still allowing parents to supervise their children, she said.
"We wanted an open floor plan so that a parent could be standing in the kitchen and still keep an eye on what's going on," she said. "But we also wanted privacy, so we separated the bedrooms from the main living space."
It took about six weeks to finish the design, she said.
Isais was particularly impressed with the way the design minimizes heating and cooling costs by using sunlight in the winter and shade in the summer, she said.
Linde said the team made a conscious effort to make the house conserve energy.
"The house is rectangular, and the long side of the house faces south, so there's a lot of natural daylight from the winter sun," she said.
The original cost estimate for the house was $82 per square foot, but the actual construction will be cheaper because many of the materials for Habitat for Humanity houses are donated, and volunteers do the labor, she said.
Cronk said UNM students should help with the construction.
"We would love to see the entire University come out and help build the house," he said.
The consideration that went into the design is not common in cheap houses, Isais said.
"The designers and contractors build, and then they're out of there," she said. "So they're not thinking about long-term gain."
The design owes its success to good teamwork, Linde said.
"We've all been in school together for the last three years," she said. "We did a lot of debating and didn't always agree, but we always talked it through until we were all happy."
The other members of the team are Laurie Baker, Terron Cox and Jaime Stich.
