WORKSHOP Inc., the Toronto-based design centre, is pleased to announce that Peter Kitchen is the winner of its two-stage student ideas competition for a smart house of the future. Called HOUSE 2020, the competition asked “What is smart now?” and sought proposals that are innovative, pragmatic, and that could lead to construction of a prototype, by 2020, on a suburban lot in Southern Ontario. The competition was originated and sponsored by Hong Kong-based real estate developer and designer, Kin Yeung. It was launched in the summer of 2014, engaging students over a six-month period in discussions with experts on the complex topic of a “smart” house for the future.

The jury, professors Carol Moukheiber and Ted Kesik (University of Toronto), professor Colin Ripley (Ryerson University), along with Kin Yeung, were impressed by Kitchen’s Tranquil House entry which he conceived as a productive yet open-ended system for casual, day-to-day living. Kitchen’s proposal was admired for backgrounding rather than foregrounding technology, and as the jury noted “allowing us to read a broad range of possibilities” including the accommodation of extended families and communal living. As well, the jury asserted that Kitchen employed an intelligent approach promoting intensive land use that could result in higher suburban density.

interior perspective of workshop house

Peter Kitchen received an undergraduate degree from the University of Waterloo and is currently in the Master of Architecture program at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Second Place was awarded to Javier Huerta-Juarez and Christopher Tron (The Two Spaces) and Third Place to Nabia Majeed (The Internet of Space), also students in the University of Toronto Master of Architecture program.