A Harvard graduate student's design that cleverly makes use of steel framework and elastic braces to build quake-resistant houses has won the top prize in the Greenville Student Design Competition, an initiative to raise awareness of reconstruction work in quake-hit Sichuan province .
The competition, organised by the global architectural firm Aedas and the South China Morning Post's Homes for Hope project, encouraged budding architects from across China to design creative, sustainable, affordable and quake-resistant housing for Sichuan, which was hit by a magnitude 8 earthquake on May 12 last year.
A total of 185 entries were received from the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and overseas.
'The quality of the entries is fantastic, some real clever minds,' said Aedas chairman Keith Griffiths, one of the judges.
The final shortlisted 10 entries were unveiled at the MIPIM Asia real estate trade exhibition this week, with the top honour going to Xing Xiong, a mainland student studying at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Students Guo Ninjo, of Beijing's Tsinghua University, and Huang Di, of Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, won the second and third prizes.
Xiong's work - 'Shaking House' - features pre-constructed units connected to an outer steel structure with elastic braces to counter the stress and movement caused by a quake.
