In this contest your challenge is to design an affordable housing solution that could also address another problem. We are giving away more than $50,000 in prizes to the best entries!
Designing and building permanent, supportive housing is a collective effort. How might we reimagine policy frameworks and think differently across a variety of industries and sectors to address this problem? What if affordable housing could solve other problems in a community?
We are excited to launch a new chapter of the annual Make It Real contest with NFL quarterback Joshua Dobbs, who studied aerospace engineering as an undergrad and interned at NASA. In the new “More Than a Destination” film series, Josh visits Factory_OS, a California-based affordable housing builder, located inside a repurposed shipyard hangar with a fascinating history. Watch the films to learn more about the problem behind this year’s challenge!
How to get started
You may use the Factory_OS starter model linked below to incorporate into your design, or you may create your own. You should begin first by selecting a specific site for the affordable housing solution that you envision, and next by providing an explanation for why you chose it and a description of the community that it will serve. Your new design should incorporate sustainable features that reduce the cost of construction maintenance. You should consider the comfort, safety, and wellness of your design’s intended residents as well as how the design might facilitate connections to outside resources. Your design should have a human scale that makes it approachable to the surrounding community.
Use this Success Criteria to guide your work.
Get inspired
Through its project known as The Phoenix, Factory_OS created 316 affordable and sustainable homes, built at about half the cost, time, and carbon footprint of a typical multi-family building in the San Francisco Bay Area. To make this possible, the multi-disciplinary team harnessed the power of the Autodesk Platform to share data and workflows and tap into AI-powered insights across the project lifecycle.
Learn more about the starter model.
Here is a model to help you get started:
For more ways to help you get started, you can visit Autodesk Make It Real.
Requirements
Your Instructable needs to include both images and text. It might use words to explain how the design fits into the history, culture, nature, landscape, surroundings, and/or architectural traditions of the chosen site. Your plan should also discuss construction methods that would be appropriate for the chosen site.
Your design should:
- Include a building design that could provide permanent, supportive housing for a defined community
- Address another problem that affects those living in proximity to the proposed building site, such as:
- Improving the environment/supporting local sustainability goals
- Advancing racial equity
- Promoting a community’s economic development
- Creating educational opportunities
- Addressing chronic homelessness
- Supporting military veterans and their families
- Approach the task with a real-world perspective, demonstrating skills and knowledge from one or more of the following fields: architecture, engineering, construction, and/or the skilled trades
- Incorporate Autodesk software
For the team-based contest, entrants must be 18 years of age or older. Entrants must nominate a team captain and form a team of up to five students, including the captain. At the time of entry, all entrants must be enrolled as students at the same community or technical college. The team captain must state the number of team members contributing to the project in the first step of the Instructable.
Awards:- $ 50,000 in prizes
Deadline:- 30-06-2025
