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Cameron Huber, a third-year undergraduate in the University of Oregon‘s School of Architecture and Allied Arts, recently won the $2,000 top prize in a national sustainable design competition.

The contest, “,” was sponsored by Northwest design-build firm Hammer & Hand. It challenged architecture students and young professionals to design a Seattle single-family house that is both highly energy efficient and aesthetically pleasing.

Huber’s design of a three-bedroom, 1,580-square-foot house impressed a jury of design professionals who noted its restraint, purity of form, friendliness to neighborhood context and understanding of energy performance within a holistic approach to sustainability.

The “HO[MIN]ID” house would be highly insulated, have solar panels, passive heating and cooling, and collect rainwater to use for flushing toilets and irrigating the yard. Huber added that he wanted to create a design that embraced the surrounding neighborhood with a front porch and large windows on the ground floor.

“Finding a form that really fit into this neighborhood tied into this holistic view of sustainability in the neighborhood,” he said.

Meeting tight requirements for energy use while creating an attractive building was a challenge, Huber said. He kept the home modest and economized the use of windows, which can reduce efficiency.

“The upstairs portion of it, I definitely had to cut a few windows (and other) things, but there was a minimum standard that we had to meet as far as energy use,” he said.

Huber said he’d like to pursue a career in sustainable design. He plans to use the prize money from the perFORM competition to design a line of sustainable portable bathrooms.