Mass-Customized Net Energy-Positive Housing For the Great Lakes Region

This paper presents the Latitude Housing System, a speculative model for a means of imagining multi-scalar nested considerations for the development of a mass-customized net energy producing housing system geared to the specific conditions of the Great Lakes region in North America. In the most general sense, the project is motivated by an attempt to frame the discussion of such housing beyond its energy performance alone, and expand by implication, the ways in which we might discuss and debate approaches to the design and delivery of sustainable housing. Considerations that range from regional economic synergies and models of clean-tech collaborations to behaviour shaping building controls systems are presented and briefly outlined as they are applied to a constructed proof of concept prototype, North House, which is based on the Latitude system.