The permanent residents of mountain towns like Fraser, Colorado, are being pushed out, and affordability is just the tip of the iceberg. Short construction seasons, labor shortages, and rising material costs make smaller, attainable housing difficult to justify, while tourism and the second-home market continue to drive high-end development. The people who sustain these communities can no longer afford to live in them.
Using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon as a platform, our team chose to confront this local housing crisis by asking: how can a house strengthen a community?
We spoke with residents, reporters, town officials, and contractors to better understand local needs and constraints. Instead of trying to design a more efficient and affordable home, we began to rethink housing as a system.
I helped develop the SPARC framework to structure decisions and align priorities across our multidisciplinary team. This created a shared way to evaluate trade-offs and ensure that decisions met our goals.
Our team designed and built the SPARC House: a modular, all-electric home for real clients in Fraser. The project achieved net-positive energy performance in its first year of occupancy and was awarded 1st place overall in the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, ranking in the top three across all ten categories.
Today, it continues to serve as a lived-in example of how high-performance housing can be adapted to cold-climate mountain towns.
2018 - 2021
WHERE
Fraser and Boulder, Colorado, USA
U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2020 Build Challenge (now called BuildingsNEXT)
MY ROLE
Team Co-Lead and Project Manager
Competed with the University of Colorado Boulder Team