[From UVa News]

A crowd of more than 100 well-wishers braved the cold Saturday afternoon for a ribbon-cutting marking the fourth ecoMOD4 project. The house, located at 104 Elliott Ave., is a collaboration between the ecoMOD project at the University of Virginia, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville and the City of Charlottesville.

The goal of ecoMOD is to design, build and evaluate affordable, prefabricated homes based upon sustainable design principles.

"What we are trying to do is create sustainable prefab housing prototypes for the sector of the economy that most needs it, and that's those who qualify for affordable housing," said John Quale, an assistant professor of architecture who directs the ecoMOD project.

Simple, decent and affordable housing really means sustainable housing, said Dan Rosensweig, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville. "Sustainable should be attainable by all and not just by those who can afford to build an energy-efficient home as some sort of luxury item," he said.

In the ecoMOD collaboration between U.Va's schools of Architecture and Engineering, students take leadership roles in designing all aspects of the project and see it through to completion.

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