2017 Best of Design Awards for Green – Residential: Casa Querétaro
Architect: DesignBridge
Location: Chicago
Casa Querétaro is a multiple-unit affordable housing project located in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. The building consists of 45 apartments and was certified LEED Platinum in 2017. Casa Querétaro resembles a structured ribbon organized to embrace a common court- yard, and each street frontage is uniquely addressed. Particular attention was paid to the building’s massing and materials; planar material changes and building volumes vary in scale from two to four stories to relate to the neighborhood’s preexisting housing structures. A single loaded corridor provides an acoustical buffer to the vast railroad right-of-way, defining the northwest boundary of the site while framing views out to the courtyard and connecting residents to the exterior property.
Landscape Architect:
Site Design Group
MEP/FP:
Maestros Ventures
Civil Engineering:
2IM Group
LEED Consultant:
dbHMS
Structural Engineer:
GFGR
Honorable Mention
Project Name: Inhabit Solar Cabana
Architect: Inhabit Solar
Location: Queens, New York
Inhabit Solar Cabana (Inhabit Solar)
This row house rooftop installation demonstrates a scalable model for retrofitting residential buildings into energy-producing and -storing, water-harvesting oases. The prefabricated rooftop solar cabana merges renewable energy and real estate to facilitate decentralized energy production directly at the source. The cabana arrives as a flat-pack kit of parts designed for rapid assembly.
