August 4, 2008

UBbuzz (blog) http://blogs.universitybusiness.com/

The President's House

Unity College (Maine), which calls itself "America's environmental college," is building a presidential house that will serve as a model for sustainable residential construction.

If plans go well, the 1,900-square-foot solar-powered home (shown below) will use only the energy that it can generate. Though the exterior of the timber-frame home is plain looking, the interior boasts some modern marvels, among them, interior walls that can be easily moved with hand tools to change room sizes.

Unity President Mitchell Thomashow, and his wife, Cindy, executive director of the college's Center for Environmental Education, will reside in this experiment daily. Their living quarters will include a large common room with an adjacent guest room, two small office areas, and a bedroom. The adjustable walls will enable them to make extra room for accommodating visitors.

The college contributed $400,000 to the project, with a monthly payment on the home being equivalent to the president's housing allowance.

"We want to demonstrate that you can have a high profile job and you can live in a functional space with zero carbon emissions," said Mitchell Thomashow. He will write a blog about the home and will teach a freshman class there.

The couple will host college events and maybe even a boardgame night or jam session (the president is a musician) for community building. They expect to move in at the end of this month.
A first for Unity, the home is the second model for OPEN Prototype Initiative, a collaboration between MIT's Open Source Building Alliance and Bensonwood with the goal of making homebuilding affordable, adaptable, and environmentally friendly. President Thomashow is a longtime friend of Tedd Benson, who is the head of Bensonwood.