Stitching the Home of the Future

[In the contest,] "Students would be asked to design homes in suburbia using the same concepts and materials that BMW is experimenting with in its revolutionary 'cloth car,' which has an exterior made of flexible fabric instead of metal. The result: Coastal houses that can move up and down above flood tides, rooms that fold up when not in use, and roofs that change shape to take advantage of sunlight.

'We are looking at it experimentally, but the projects, at least some of them, are not that futuristic,' said Barkow. 'They are not that utopian.'"

"Nora Yoo, a third year master's student, took as her starting point the so-called shotgun shack - a small, narrow house found mainly in the Southern United States and named for the fact that a bullet aimed at the front door would travel out the back door.

Sections of the house Yoo designed could be tucked away on occasion to create a larger side yard or to save energy."