Ankeny Student Wins Affordable Housing Competition
Ankeny High School student Griffin Gade took top honors in the Can I Be Your Neighbor Design Challenge. The design competition kicked off Polk County Housing Trust Fund’s annual Affordable Housing Week, which was April 2-10.
Griffin Gade took home top honors at the competition.
Griffin, a senior at Ankeny High School, will receive a $1,000 scholarship from the Home Builders Association of Greater Des Moines. Braden Simonsen was runner-up and received a $500 scholarship from Home Inc. Bradley Dacus and Dylan Hender were also finalists and both students received a $250 scholarship from Hatch Development Group. All four students presented their design to a panel of judges.
The four Ankeny finalists at the PappaJohn Center entrance (from left to right): Griffin Gade, Bradley Dacus, Dylan Hender, and Braden Simonsen.
More than 25 students from four central Iowa high schools were given a profile of a fictional family who wanted an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) designed for a mother/grandmother who wanted to move next to her daughter and two grandchildren. The ADU lot location was set as Des Moines. Students had parameters such as maximum square footage and limitations on costs to keep in consideration. The competition, managed by ASK Studio, a Des Moines architectural firm, included classroom visits by architects to provide feedback to the students partway through the process.
Five designs were selected for the competition event located at the PappaJohn Center in downtown Des Moines. Each finalist had up to five minutes to present their design, followed by a question and answer session with a panel of judges.