The City of Nelson is looking for the best designs for laneway houses in a new design contest
Design teams, architects and groups of students are welcome to submit their plans.
A qualified jury will then review the submissions and select three winners, whose plans will be available for purchase through the City of Nelson.
“There will be very low cost plans for the public and much cheaper than custom made plans”, says Alex Thumm, city planner.
He says the contest came about after they noticed an increase in demand.
“There is lot of interest out there, and we are getting some interest even outside of the community. It is booming all over Canada”.
Here are the criteria that the jury will base their decision on:
Design: successful designs will be high-quality, attractive, and practical
Good home, good neighbor: successful designs will be appreciated by both neighbors and occupants of the laneway house.
Affordability: in their use of materials, successful designs will strike a balance between affordability and sustainability that will be attractive to Nelson property owners
Flexibility and longevity: the winning designs will be those that are the most elastic, meaning adaptable to and replicable across a variety of lots, neighbourhoods, lot configurations, and topographies in Nelson (which are often steep).
Eco-Design: green materials are used where appropriate and maximum possible energy efficiency is achieved (strive to achieve the highest-possible step code level).
Three designs will be selected and the plans available through the City of Nelson sometime in the winter or early spring of 2020.
For more information, go to the City of Nelsons contest page.