Confident that an environmentally-friendly house could be built for $300, Tuck School of Business professor Vijay Govindarajan organized a global competition to solicit design ideas for such houses, which could improve the quality of life for billions of poor individuals in developing countries. Dartmouth undergraduate and graduate students are collaborating to research and design proposals for The $300 House Challenge, which began last month and runs through May 31, according to Govindarajan.
The idea for the project originated in a conversation between Govindarajan who also serves as director of Tuck's Center for Global Leadership and marketing consultant Christian Sarkar regarding possible article topics for The Harvard Business Review website. The two published a post proposing the $300 house concept on the Harvard Business Review blog in August and received so much positive feedback that they decided to establish a contest for designs, Govindarajan said.
The creators of the top three submissions will each receive $10,000, according to Govindarajan.
The three winners, along with two additional "favorites" selected by a jury, will attend a prototyping workshop intended to help them convert their hypothetical designs into tangible products, Govindarajan said.
Students at the College examined the feasibility of creating a $300 house over the past several weeks, and two groups of Tuck students are entering submissions as part of Tuck's First-Year project, during which students spend 12 weeks of Spring term applying their coursework to real-world scenarios, Govindarajan said.
Five students are investigating the feasibility of implementing the $300 house project in Haiti, according to Soni Mistry Tu'12. Both the business potential and opportunity to effect true social change appealed to her group, she said. Another group of students is conducting similar research on building houses in India, according to Govindarajan.
Studio art professor John Wilson said he incorporated the $300 House Challenge into his Architecture 1 course curriculum by dividing students into two teams one that will propose designs applicable in India while the other will work on housing designs for Haiti. Two Tuck groups worked with undergraduate students to help develop a sense of the "relevant cultural information," Wilson said.
"I think it's a really interesting thing because it comes from the areas of marketing and global economy, but there's a very, very important design component which is going to be critical for any kind of success," Wilson said. "It's an interesting opportunity to promote some collaboration and to see what might happen in terms of a back-and-forth exchange of ideas."
Even if Wilson's students do not win the contest, their designs may still become a reality, he said. Wilson has identified a possible site for a project on property for sale near a Haitian hospital that is being constructed in conjunction with Partners in Health, Wilson said. Govindarajan decided on the $300 target price for the contest because he needed to define the project and to give participants specific direction, he said.
"We came up with the $300 price as more as an attention-grabbing thing," Govindarajan said. "If we had said build a cheap house,' I don't think it would have been as galvanizing."
Project implementation will include offering solutions to several common problems in the regions, many of which address the issue of money, according to Govindarajan.
"Even a $300 house for a family that's making a dollar a day can be hard to buy," he said.
Govindarajan said he first observed the "heartbreaking" conditions of existing housing options for the poor as a college student in India. He said he once visited "one of the filthiest slums" in the country, where the lack of basic sanitation and electrical facilities resulted in health issues and prevented families from improving their own situation.
From a business perspective, the opportunity to make money by producing affordable housing for the developing world is enormous, Govindarajan said.
Out of the seven people comprising the world population, approximately four billion people do not have proper housing accommodations, Govindarajan said.
"If you make a $300 house you do the math," Govindarajan said. "You're talking about a $300 billion market."
The $300 House Challenge will be judged by individuals with a wide variety of expertise, according to Govindarajan.
"We picked a mix of people," he said. "There are some with an architecture background, some who are very keenly aware of the social problems, some who started social enterprises, some who are experts in green technology."
