The following jury met on 9th May 2006 to judge the 18 short-listed entries to the Living Steel architectural competition for sustainable housing. The Competition Professional and Technical Advisers were present and a report of the Technical Committee was presented to the Jury.

• Glenn Murcutt
• Charles Correa
• James Berry
• Jaime Lerner (Union of International Architects, UIA)
• Andrew Ogorzalek
• Nicholas de Monchaux (UIA).

Glenn Murcutt was duly elected as the Chairman of the Jury.

Following a detailed review of all entries, the Jury unanimously selected the following two clear winners to the competition:

• For Poland - architectenbureau cepezed
• For India - Piercy Conner

General comments by the Jury

The Jury was impressed by the ambition and scope of the Living Steel programme and the architectural competition and look forward to its continuing contribution to the crucial global debate on the sustainability and quality of residential environments.

Many proposals, and the winning entries in particular, displayed the potential for steel construction to provide lightweight, open, flexible and refined spaces responding to contemporary urban living.

The Jury felt that the Living Steel programme should take the opportunity in the next stage to broaden the design thinking and to encourage further innovation.

The Jury provided valuable advice to Living Steel during the Jury meeting concerning the experience of running this competition and offered many excellent suggestions about how to improve the process, in particular in relation to the achievement of the overall goals of the Living Steel programme. These recommendations will be incorporated into subsequent rounds of Living Steel architectural competitions.

Jury Comments on the winning entries

The Jury gave the following comments on the winning entry submitted by architectbureau cepezed:

1. The Jury was very impressed with this entry highlighting particularly the simple floor plans, the robustness and flexibility of the design, the use of double loaded corridors and the flexibility of the layout to enable full advantage to be made of ventilation and daylight.
2. The Jury appreciated the scale of the proposed design and in particular, how the configuration of the building can respond to its context.
3. The diversity of the façade materials and systems should be explored further to reflect the aspect and orientation of the building, including shading devices and the ability to open windows.
4. The thermodynamics of the voids between apartments should be explored further. This could include incorporating flexibility to open and close the voids to allow for natural ventilation during summer months and as a solar heat collector during the winter. The Jury remarked that the flexibility of this design would enable it to be adapted easily to other climates.

The Jury gave the following comments on the winning entry submitted by Piercy Conner:

1. Overall, the Jury was very impressed with the simplicity and lightness of this scheme. Specifically the Jury was attracted to the strong concept of ventilation across every space. Furthermore the Jury felt this idea was sufficiently robust and flexible to allow consideration for other proportions of the floor plate.
2. The Jury commended the architects for the inclusion of the roof terrace in the scheme.
3. The Jury commended the strong design element of adjustable perimeter screening and recommends that locally available in-fill materials, such as bamboo should be considered. The Jury recommends that options to replace some of the glass façade with solid walls be explored. Not only would this reduce the cost but solid walls could also be used to provide more privacy for the building users.
4. The Jury was attracted to the potential for the plan to provide open and closed zones within apartments.

General comments on both winning designs

When the actual site for each project is identified, the Jury recommends the following:

1. That in developing these schemes, the architects should extend the same systematic thinking to the usage of the landscape around the building, including the possibility of combining car parking with residential/community functions on the ground floor.
2. The Jury encourages site specific solutions that will address local sustainability aspects beyond the building including, but not limited to, landscape, infrastructure, rainwater harvesting and waste management.
3. The Jury also noted that there are a number of local building regulation issues that need to be carefully addressed in order not to compromise the designs.