Seattle architecture/design firm Mithun won first place in the C2C Home Competition with their design for a house powered by spinach. The house will be built this summer in Roanoke, Virginia, along with other contest winners.

The competition asked designers to work on work on cradle-to-cradle design principles and create objects and processes that replenish communities, using materials that can be recycled indefinitely.

Mithun’s house takes energy from the sun and uses spinach protein to generate electricity for neighbouring homes and street lighting infrastructure.

The house’s skylight brings in the sun’s rays, and the heat sink stabilizes temperatures, while a highly conductive material produces photosynthetic energy generated from the protein in spinach. The spinach proteins are sandwiched between the core’s glass walls; their chlorophyll converts the sun’s rays to fuel the home. Besides, a vegetated roof system collects and filters stormwater into the building core

More images.
Via WorldChanging and Treehugger Gristmill.
Related: The search for sun-powered bio-computer.