Archeworks and UrbanLab win $100,000 to save our water supply

Image from UrbanLab's 2006 Growing Water proposal for City of the Future

Chicagoans extract one billion gallons of water from the Great Lakes Basin every day and recycle less than one percent of it—which means that with U.S. water supplies dwindling, we're screwed. Or are we? Bridgeport architecture firm UrbanLab has won the American Institute of Architects’ $100,000 Latrobe Prize for Growing Energy/Water: Using the Grid to Get Off the Grid. The project is a partnership with the Chicago design school Archeworks, where—as TOC reported last year—UrbanLab founders Sarah Dunn and Martin Felsen were named research director and director in January 2008.

Growing Energy/Water grew out of UrbanLab’s winning entry in the History Channel’s 2006 City of the Future competition: The firm proposed a way for Chicago to treat its wastewater without using chemicals so that every drop could be safely returned to Lake Michigan—averting war with Las Vegas. (OK, I added that last part.)