The nice thing about your average international design competition is its sheer reach, but it's also nice to see small, rural communities holding design comps of their own. The Bicentennial House Competition was one such event, sponsored by the tiny town of New Harmony, Indiana, population just 789 people.

The historic town of New Harmony has an architectural legacy in the Harmonist house, a type of dwelling named for the religious movement of German immigrants who setlled the area in the early 1800s. A Harmonist house was a simple 20x30 box with an austere look and a central chimney, originally built with old-school techniques:

...The Harmonie Society constructed...28 single family dwellings made with half-timbered traditional construction and insulated with wooden boards covered with straw and mud. Painted plaster covered the interior walls, while either hardwood clapboards or bricks sheathed the exteriors. Wood shakes covered the roofs. A footprint of 20 x 30 feet was the norm in each two-story house.The Bicentennial House Competition asked entrants to design a modern-day update of not less than 1,200 square feet that could be built for just $150,000 using sustainable materials. Surprisingly, they received over 100 entries from across the country, not bad for a town of less than 800 people. Reactions were mixed, with a local paper reporting that one judge felt such design competitions "[are] not going to produce deep and substantial work" while another judge felt it was a step in the right direction, noting that "a lot of what we're building in most communities is pretty bad design, dead-on-arrival, suburban tract houses, which I would not like to see happen to New Harmony."

Mixed reactions aside, we applaud anything that engages even the smallest communities to take a closer look at design.

The competition's winners will be announced here on October 1st.