Design Competition

Dollhouse Gallery
About the Competition
Details and Fine Print
Application
Jurors
Green Building

Start Small. Think Big. Build Green. (2005)

This competition took place in 2005 as a one-time project. Other organizations that want to pick up the idea and run a competition and future exhibits are welcome to contact us about using the website and/or our knowledge. The information on the competition remains here as a reference for the project.

About the Competition

The competition goal is simple: Inspire lots of people (big and little) to take steps to make their own homes a little healthier and easier on the environment.

Energy efficiency, water conservation, the use of nontoxic building materials and other sustainable practices are gradually making inroads into mainstream home building. But many people still think of green building—if they think of it at all—as a bewildering subject best left to the experts.

The Green Dollhouse Project Competition will help change that perception by showing kids and adults how we can all take action to make our homes healthier and more environmentally sustainable.

Design professionals and design students are invited to submit built dollhouses of their own original invention. The dollhouses should inspire children and adults to take some steps—small or large—to make their homes a little greener.

A distinguished panel of jurors will select the winning dollhouses (see below for the judging criteria). The dollhouses themselves will inspire the theme and design of an exhibit whose audacious goal is nothing less than to make green building mainstream. The exhibit will open in late September, 2005 at Coyote Point Museum in San Mateo, California, then travel in 2006 to other locations around the country, including Grand Rapids, MI and other venues that are still tbd.

Judging Criteria

We have two deceptively simple criteria by which we will judge the entries:

• Dishy doll dwellings: Your entry must, first and foremost, be successful as a dollhouse. It should delight children (and adults!) and hold up to active play. Creativity, inventiveness, playfulness, and functionality as a dollhouse are key features.
  
  
• Great green guidance: Your completed dollhouse and accompanying design statement should teach children and adults about one or more aspects of green home building, and inspire them to do something now to make their own home a little greener. Green building concepts to be conveyed by the dollhouse could include but are not limited to:
  
  
  • energy efficiency
  • water conservation
  • environmentally preferable materials (for example, recycled, recyclable, reusable, adaptable, reclaimed, nontoxic, durable, locally produced, sustainably harvested, rapidly renewable, etc.)
  • renewable energy generation (for example, solar or wind power)
  • passive solar design
  • solar water heating
  • climate-appropriate design
  • and more

A Few More Words of Explanation

We're talking dollhouses here, not architectural scale models of constructable human dwellings.

So first, put yourself in a doll's shoes:

• How does this dollhouse make my dolly world a better place?

Then put yourself in a child's shoes:

• Is this dollhouse fun?
• What does it teach me that I can try at home?

Finally, put yourself in a parent's shoes:

• Would I want my child to play with this dollhouse?
• Could I live with this dollhouse in my own house?
• What does this dollhouse teach me about how to make homes healthier for people and the planet?

Got it? Now slip off all those shoes and wiggle your toes! Have fun, and remember—it may help to sit on the floor while dreaming up your sustainable dollhouse.