Associate Professor Jörg Rügemer received the 2022 ACSA Design Build Award for the Kunga Accessory Dwelling Unit, which was completed in the Fall of 2020. This project was the inaugural project for the DesignUTAH@SLC program.

The ACSA Design Build Award recognizes projects that demonstrate how faculty, students, and schools work to realize design-build projects. The Kunga Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) is a teaching, research, and community outreach project that created learning and research opportunities through resilient, sustainable, and social just design and construction, linking the team of 15 architectural students with faculty, researchers, community partners, neighborhood citizens, professionals, jurisdictions, and industry partners.

During the Academic Year 2019/2020, the team designed and constructed the 830 sq. ft. ADU for a refugee client in a wheelchair. Project goals included accessibility, resilience, high performance, and cost-effectiveness. Due to a challenging semester schedule and a permitting process that took over eight months, the team pre-assembled the unit in modules in the school’s shop yard, which were then moved and reassembled at the final location.

The Kunga ADU became an award-winning, small-scale high-performance structure that provides everything that a larger house would offer too. Its performance-based design led to an average EUI performance increase of 44% over the comparable code standard building, with future-oriented electric-only technology.