ARCHETYPE SUSTAINABLE HOUSE COMPETITION, Woodbridge, Ontario
5 acre community with 40 sustainable houses designed to meet LEED™ Platinum

Architect: Young + Wright Architects Inc.
Project Architect / Team Leader: Tom Kolbasenko

This entry to the Archetype Sustainable House Competition aimed to reconcile the opposing ideas between sustainability and suburban sprawl to provide a model for sustainable residential development in Canada. Based on the principles of Efficient, Affordable and Responsible (EAR) planning and design, this proposal focused on developing an approach for a highly sustainable design for a single family house - the Archetype House EAR HOUSE, and an approach for modified development patterns of greenfield suburban sites, the Archetype Community, which combined could have a far more potent leverage effect on the environment than a string of Archetype Houses.

At the neighbourhood scale land is allocated for windmill energy generation and the management of storm water. Compared with typical households, the Archetype House achieve 80% energy reduction, 90% greenhouse gas reduction and are built of materials with the highest renewable, recyclable and local content, emphasizing health. Our proposal took an ecological footprint perspective and examines the ways and means of reducing the impact of development from the single housing unit up to the community scale.

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