As part of its Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World public awareness campaign, Portland Cement Association has committed $10,000 to a student design
As part of its Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World public awareness campaign, Portland Cement Association has committed $10,000 to a student design competition administered by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.
The competition challenges university students to investigate an innovative use of portland cement-based material to achieve sustainable design objectives. Students can provide solutions as a single building element or a comprehensive building design. It requires participants to produce 1) an essay up to 1,000 words covering project concepts and explaining how cement-based materials help meet sustainable design objectives; 2) drawings that best show the relationship between cement-based materials and sustainable design objectives; 3) illustration of key elements of sustainable infrastructure and building systems; 4) detailed drawings of those elements; and, 5) a three-dimensional representation of the plan, or model photographs.
The competition follows this schedule: Feb. 8, registration deadline; May 3, submission deadline; late May, winners announced, followed by publishing of an online competition summary. The competition will have first, second and third place, with student/team and faculty sponsors sharing $5,000, $3,000 and $2,000 awards, respectively. PCA will also provide each school a complete PCA StructurePoint software package for reinforced concrete building analysis and design. Registration forms and additional competition information can be obtained from Eric Ellis/Concrete Competition, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 1735 New York Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20006; 202/785-2324 (ext. 8); [email protected]
The PCA-ASCA Student Design Competition follows the Environmental Protection Agency’s awarding of $10,000 to each of 41 student teams for the 2005-2006 academic year to research and develop sustainable designs in the second annual People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) competition. In an era of rising energy costs, the results of the first P3 competition should make people sit up and take notice, says EPA’s George Gray, assistant administrator for the Office of Research and Development. In last year’s competition, four student projects became new businesses with clients, two of them marketing energy monitoring systems.
More information about the P3 winners and their projects can be found at www.epa.gov/ncer/P3recipients/2005. The National Academies, advisors to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine, will convene a panel to recommend candidate award winners who will be chosen by the EPA. The next P3 Award Competition will be May 9-10, 2006, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The agency will soon request applications for the 2006 P3 National Student Design Competition for Sustainability.
Green roofs and stormwater management are covered in new Web sites launched by the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association. In www.greenrooftops.org, NRMCA discusses how concrete performs in foilage-bearing green roofs, which are credited with minimizing buildings’ heat island effect and curtailing stormwater runoff. In www.concreteparking.org, NRMCA spotlights pervious concrete pavements, which have been increasingly specified in commercial parking areas for drainage efficiency.