Last January at the International Builders' Show in Orlando, amid the granite countertops, palatial bathroom suites, and other requisite components of the fully equipped American life, a 300-square-foot home stole the show. "The Katrina Cottage," as it is affectionately known, is a modest, traditionally styled home with a generous front porch and a distinctly Southern feel. It was designed by Marriane Cusato as an alternative to the fema trailers that are routinely used to offer temporary housing to disaster victims. Cusato had designed the structure in response to what a number of displaced residents of hurricane-torn towns said they wanted in a home. Although it is getting rave reviews from native Mississippians and is priced competitively with the fema trailer, the Katrina Cottage has been rejected as part of the disaster relief package because of a technicality in fema rules which allows only the provision of temporary housing to victims. Some have suggested that the real issue is whether we are comfortable offering disaster relief that doesn't look sufficiently grim. This story speaks volumes about our instinct to protect and repair the American Dream in response to tragedy, as well as the often ironic role the government can play in that process.

Six years earlier, the U.S. Energy Department announced a "Solar Decathlon" to see which school of architecture could design the most efficient and livable solar-powered house. The tragedy for which this competition would ultimately provide some kind of response came when two 747s toppled the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Although the Energy Department could not have foreseen such a turn of events, this particular crisis invested the competition with new meaning. In her introduction to Trojan Goat: A Self Sufficient House, Karen Van Lengen, dean of the University of Virginia's School of Architecture, makes the claim that after 9/11, "many Americans recognized the need to become more self-sufficient and visionary in their design of sustainable environments for the future." Probably the Energy Department had had a broader purpose in mind when they planned the competition, but there's nothing quite like playing the national security card to add a sense of urgency to an environmental issue.

Notwithstanding this somewhat alarmist preamble, John Quale narrates an engaging story. He recounts how the University of Virginia's schools of Architecture and Engineering participated in and eventually won the design and livability award for the contest with their entry, curiously named the Trojan Goat. At one level the book is significant simply for putting a much-needed spotlight on the complicity of buildings in our current energy crisis. I've always assumed the automobile was the chief culprit in our addiction to fossil fuels, but apparently "buildings account for half the total energy burnt each year in the U.S."

Those who know a bit about the temperament of architects and the ethos of the architectural institutions over the past 50 years or so will find Trojan Goat particularly intriguing. As unremarkable as it might seem to the lay reader, the idea of architects collaborating with one another, engaging in genuine dialogue with engineers, and spending some time actually occupying the building that they designed is nothing short of astounding.

Architects have long struggled for liberation from the various contingencies of their vocation. Beginning around the time of the Renaissance, they went to great lengths to prove that theirs was a liberal not a mechanical art. They wanted to show that they were autonomous artists and not base craftspeople. Architects in the 20th century often sought to extricate themselves from history, local conditions, and even the wishes of their clients in order to make a more pure gesture with their work. Current architects continue this trend by waging heroic battles against geometry and physics. It's telling that within the past decade, a "post-occupancy evaluation" (or, translated into everyday speech, inquiring whether the building actually works) had to emerge as a radical concept.

In this context, then, the reader is invited to imagine the audacity of an architectural school setting up a project so that "everyone would have an equal hand in the design." We discover further that Engineering and Landscape Architecture students were invited into the process early enough to actually collaborate on the design as well as to integrate the mechanics and ecological setting of the building with conceptual ideas. To have such a disparate group agree on one particular plan would have been a significant achievement in itself; to require the students to go ahead and build the structure with their own hands feels truly revolutionary. As part of the competition, students had to spend about a week preparing food and performing tasks of daily life within their building.

Quale's narrative, along with the student quotes sprinkled throughout the text, provides a good account of the kooky collaborative process that led to UVA's victory. One gets the sense that the student camaraderie and interdisciplinary understanding achieved in the process will have an impact far greater than that of the actual structure that was built. It certainly gave me hope that the architectural vanguard is capable of making a turn in the right direction.

Having said that, the stipulations of the Solar Decathlon and this account of one of the winning teams are as interesting for what is not said as for what is. In many ways this radically different building is as much a reflection of our current values as it is a challenge to them. The ecological features of the building are both expensive and high-tech. Nowhere in the book is it hinted that most vernacular building styles of a particular region tend to use less energy—and can achieve energy efficiency less expensively—than ones that are built (as this one was) for a universal setting.

Nor, in this same vein, does Quale point out that the siting of a building will ultimately have more impact on its energy use than the form of energy that powers it. In other words, it is less expensive to heat and cool attached buildings (apartments, townhouses, etc.) than detached ones. Furthermore, when buildings are placed in exclusively residential zones or on the fringes of town, the extra automobile trips generated increase the energy outlay significantly. Even an environmentally sensitive "little cabin in the woods'' spells ecological disaster when multiplied by 280 million Americans. And yet, it is precisely that ubiquitous motif that continues to drive the American housing industry.

Such quibbles aside, Trojan Goat is both an entertaining read and a possible harbinger of a warming trend in the frigid waters of the architectural academy. Of course, institutions being what they are, this change won't come quickly. There is a telling moment in the narrative, where the UVA team is scandalized by the discovery of "a vague reference in the rules to 'consumer acceptance'" as one of the evaluative criteria. The disgust implied by Quale's scare-quotes is palpable. Imagine consumer acceptance as a relevant factor in sustainable building! Apparently, it's not just fema that likes to dictate what's best for us.

Eric O. Jacobsen is the author of Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith (Brazos Press).

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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