Also, thank you to those of you who entered the "OSWall Design Your Own App" competition. We ultimately picked three winners whose app strategies were displayed alongside our prototype in the exhibit. Look for a blog post later this week along with a special section of our website that will feature the winning designs.

Finally, a HUGE thank you to our good friends Dave Hultman from Engineering at the University of Minnesota and Susanna Hohmann from Terrazign in Portland for their tireless efforts in helping us pull this off. It would have never happened without them.

Check out some photos of the installation here.

We will have a new section on our site under the "Prototypes" heading featuring diagrams, drawings, and photos of this latest version of OSWall.

On Thursday night, February 25, we spoke at the Walker Art Center as part of their "Drawn Here (and There)" lecture series. The lecture was well-attended by students, colleagues, and interested folks from the Twin Cities community. The Walker has already posted the lecture here, so if you missed it, don't fret...you can check still check it out. Thanks to all of you who attended and a big thanks to Andrew Blauvelt for inviting us.

Follow the link to find out more. 

Click here.

HouMinn is proud to announce we will be speaking at the Walker Art Center on Thursday, February 25th as part of the "Drawn Here (and There)" lecture series. Drawn Here (and There) : Contemporary Design in Conversation looks at two leading design partnerships - one half of each partnership is based in the Twin Cities, the other thousands of miles away. The lecture is part of Target Free Nights sponsored by Target. Contact the Walker at 612.375.7600 or at design.walkerart.org.

The "Design Your Own App" competition has almost drawn to a close. Today is the last day to submit your sketches, models, drawings, or animations for OSWall App designs. Remember, we're not necessarily looking for extensive documentation of your idea, just a quality idea. If we pick your design, you will have time to develop it more later. So, head over to the "OSWall App Design Competition" page to review the details and upload your work. 

Thanks to those of you who have already submitted! The ideas are wide-ranging, innovative, and exciting. Coming up soon, we will post the ideas for your viewing and solicit comments on what you think are the best strategies. Until then...we want your ideas!

HouMinn was asked to design a gingerbread version of Draft House as part of a holiday giveaway for Hometta (sketch at left). After some trial and error and a lot of t.l.c., Quyen Ma of Hometta put the plan to paper and finally to our bellies. The result is a delicious model of Draft House. Follow the links to download instructions for building your own edible modern home. When you make your own culinary version of the house, send us a picture. We would love to see the results!

UPDATE: Well, we were fortunate enough to have our gingerbread Draft House go a bit viral this holiday season. The plans were picked up by Otto, Apartment Therapy, Grass Roots Modern, ohdeedoh, Mrs Mogul, Green Muse, Say Yes to Hoboken, and arch daily, just to name a few sites. We would also like to thank these folks who made their own edible Draft Houses. Thanks to the people at Real Food Made Easy and Myrtle Street Review. 

As you can see, we're a bit behind on things, and we bet you are, too. We've heard from many interested people that they want to enter the OSWall "Design Your Own App" competition, but with end-of-semester / end-of-year deadlines coming up, they need a little extra time. So, we're extending the OSWall deadline to January 15th. We hope this allows more of you submit your brilliant ideas...once you have rested and filled your bellies over the Holidays. Looking forward to hearing from you! Drop us a line if you have questions.

Read about OSWall HERE.

Read about the Design Your Own App Competition HERE.

We have just launched a new section of our website called "Design Your Own App." This page outlines a competition we are holding for students, designers, or any other curious, creative people to design a smart wall panel, or "app" (short for "application") for our latest wall prototype project, OSWall (Open Source Wall). Can you come up with an app that collects and recycles rainwater, passively cools an interior, generates electricity from wind, grows plants, insulates, or provides natural light for a residential wall? What other hair brained ideas do you have? Winners will have their design schemes prototyped for an upcoming exhibition at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery called "Envelop{e}s" curated by Christopher Height, Associate Professor at Rice University's School of Architecture. Money and fame awaits the winners, so head over to the "Design Your Own App" competition page for details.

DUE DATE: 01 DECEMBER 2009 

Welcome Hometta Boston launched Friday, October 16th with a great opening party at the Pinkcomma Gallery in Boston. The event was a hit. Special thanks go to Ann Chou, Quyen Ma, and Tzu-yu Chen of Hometta for their continued work on the show. Welcome Hometta - Boston will run through November 9th. The Gallery is located at 81B Wareham St in Boston. Photography by Ann Chou.

HouMinn installed the first OSWall prototype over Labor Day weekend. The half scale mock-up will be on display in the UHGBC show at the University of Houston School of Architecture Sept 10-18, 2009. The images above show the assembly of the frame (Kevin Lin, Jon Siani, and Jessy Yang are doing some heavy lifting) and of vacuum formed blank "apps" (Jeff Montague is fitting the vacuum formed pieces to the frame). Thanks also to Dave Hultman, Mike Hara, Marcus Martinez, and Chad Loucks for their help in the design, fabrication, and assembly of the prototype.