Civil engineering students Amanda Cirinna (1T3) and Steven Goldstine (1T3) recently took top honours at the Home Sweet Home Student Challenge, an annual competition developed by OntarioGreenSpec.ca and vied for by schools across the province.

The competition, which is adjudicated by an advisory board of 12 academic leaders and green-building practitioners, was created to engage Ontario’s post-secondary students in the research, innovation and adoption of green-building techniques.

Schools were given a specific scenario for a project to take on and given several months to come up with a comprehensive proposal that was presented to the board.

This year’s challenge? To design a modest retirement residence for Rick Mercer, comedian and noted environmentalist.

“Many factors influenced the physical design of our home,” the team wrote in their submission to the committee. “Although the primary objective of the design was to be as sustainable and efficient as possible, we balanced this with other considerations such as liveability, aesthetic appeal, practicality and optimal use of land.”

In the end, they settled on a one-and-a-half-storey house, with the defining feature being an offset, south-facing window wall on the the second storey – which then leads to an open, high-interior atrium.

The engineering students competed as part of their final-year capstone design project, a major undertaking designed to bring together all the fundamentals they had learned over four years in one culminating, practical experience.

The project was undertaken with the guidance of Professor Kim Pressnail (CivE), an expert in building science and sustainability. Professor Pressnail was instrumental in redesigning the curriculum in Civil Engineering to integrate sustainability concepts.