The Del. E. Webb School of Construction is seeking students to help develop business plans for housing in Phoenix.
Students would develop plans in conjunction with the Salt River Project.
SRP will provide an award of up to $5,000 to the team "whose goal is to develop sustainable home designs suitable for mass-production in the Phoenix area," the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering said in a statement.
Teams will conduct work in a sustainable housing class that students can receive construction or geography credit for.
Sustainable, or "green" housing refers to designing homes that incorporate energy and water conservation, and environmentally friendly building materials, said Lori Singleton, SRP's Environmental Initiative manager.
"The idea is to have students compete by looking at residential markets in Phoenix and come up with a design that can become a reality," she said.
Howard Bashford, the construction school's director of graduate studies, said the class seeks students of all majors in order to mimic the complexity of today's business world.
"We tend to educate kids in a silo," said Bashford, who operated his own construction and engineering consulting firm for 19 years. "You tend to learn a lot about only what you study and the fact is, you don't work that way in life."
The idea of sustainable housing began in the 1970s with the advent of Earth Day, but widespread awareness of it began recently, Bashford said.
"I don't know of anybody else doing this in their schools of construction," he said.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency Web site, worldwide construction projects consume 3 billion tons of raw materials each year.
Also, buildings and homes in the United States use one-third of the energy supply and two-thirds of the nation's electricity, making sustainable housing "a good place to start," on environmental concerns, Bashford said.
The increased cost of sustainable housing likely will detract from its usefulness, Singleton said.
"The biggest challenge is the cost and getting homebuyers and homebuilders to meet somewhere with their demands," she said. "The cost will not go down until it's the traditional market."
Reach the reporter at christian.palmer@asu.edu.
