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Free Green: Giving it away |
Two years ago, archrecord2 profiled Ben Uyeda as his team from Cornell competed in the Solar Decathlon. Following the competition, team members formed Zero Energy Design (Independence Energy Homes), a collaborative effort among architects, engineers, and financial experts to design green residential architecture. While ZED has been successful — they’ve worked on over 56 projects in the U.S. and other countries — statistics show that architects are engaged for less than 5 percent of the single-family homes built in the country. Uyeda and his team wanted to make a larger impact, so they “began to look for a model that would allow us to move laterally and apply our energy-modeling, design, and financial expertise directly to the masses.
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”In April 2008, this model became reality with the launch of Free Green, an open source design Web site that provides construction documents, specifications, and renderings for green homes — all available for free download. It seems like a radical approach, especially given the stigma associated with “catalog plans.” And nothing really comes for free — or does it? Free Green avoids charging for downloads by generating revenue through green-products advertising and by incorporating these products into the specifications for the house designs.
Architects and designers submit their work for review and subsequent posting on the site; and though they are not paid for this, the exposure is an exciting prospect for emerging designers. Uyeda explains, “We are convinced that the single greatest opportunity to progress America’s design culture is to create a bridge between the public and the considerable young design talent that is coming out of our schools every year.” Beginning in January 2009, designers will be able to create a profile page similar to those in Facebook. Designers will be rated and their portfolios reviewed by peers.
Another benefit of Free Green is that designers and builders can use it as a tool for studying construction details and incorporating them into their own work. So far, more than 10,000 stock plans have been downloaded, making Free Green one of the largest stock-plan suppliers in America. Interestingly, about 70 percent of the downloaded designs have been Modern.
Free Green hopes to succeed where prefabricated housing has failed to catch on with the general public. “Mass-publication, not prefabrication, is the architect’s role in improving the state of housing,” is the mantra of Uyeda and his team. Top green blogs, including Treehugger and Inhabitat, seem to agree: “They are charging exactly what most people are willing to pay for design: Nothing,” Treehugger notes. While this may often be the case, it calls into question the implications of architects “giving away” their work for free as well as inviting plagiarism. Is Free Green pricing designers out of the building equation?
Links:
Zero Energy Homes
Free Green
Blog reviews:
Inhabitat
Treehugger
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