The Ohio State University Solar Decathlon team believes that Ohio and the American mid-west provide an ideal backdrop within which to re-address sustainable housing as a viable option for homeowners. Mid-Western cities not only contain significant populations, but also areas which cannot be defined with traditional “urban” or “sub-urban” labels. Many of these cities, Columbus suburbs in particular, are vast congregations of single family houses. They tend to be large and very inefficient, and they have an extremely negative collective environmental impact.

A gap has appeared between the availability of attractive, sustainable design and its demand. It is this neglected segment of housing that our Solar Decathlon team intends to fill. Specifically, our house is a proposal for a product that can be marketed effectively in mid-western America. It contains the necessary active technologies needed for sustainable housing, but it does not flaunt these through its aesthetic, keeping them, in fact, hidden.

Instead, the aesthetic of the house is directly derived from indigenous building types of Columbus, Ohio. The house is clad in reclaimed barn wood siding, a warm and familiar material to all who live in the area. Meanwhile, the form of the house pays homage to the agriculture industry that has characterized Ohio as the heartland of the United States. We believe the traditional Midwestern sensibility used in the design will prove to be attractive to the mid-western consumer, while providing a friendly product for the environment.