Center for Resilient Design

CoAD Assistant Professor Matt Burgermaster has won a 2013 Builder’s Choice Custom Home Design Award for his project “Ice Cycle House,” a sustainable “pre-fab” house located in Buffalo, New York. This design features an innovative combination of digital fabrication processes, prefabricated components, and low-cost materials within an exterior envelope solution that works with, instead of against, extreme snow loads and the natural snowmelt cycle by creatively integrating them into the building’s multifaceted performance of insulation and drainage functions. The system prototype was created in response to the need for new resilient design and construction solutions applicable to extreme climatic environments and weather situations. The Builder’s Choice Custom Home Design Awards is a national awards competition that honors housing projects for their excellence in both design and construction, and is judged by leading professionals from the architecture and building industries. This award was presented at the “Designing for Resilience” 2013 Reinvention Symposium and is published in the October issue of BUILDER, the magazine of the National Association of Home Builders. Selected out of over 630 entries, Burgermaster shares award honors in the “On The Boards” category with NADAAA/Nader Tehrani. The “Ice Cycle House” previously received awards in national design competitions from professional and academic organizations alike, including the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), and the Journal of Architecture Education (JAE).