Civitas | 2017-2019

Memphis, Tennessee, USA

Architects: archimania
Clients: Barry Alan Yoakum and Kathy Howard Yoakum
General Contractor: Barry Alan Yoakum / archimania
Landscape Architects: Plants + People
Photographers: Alan Karchmer/OTTO

Civitas is a 2798 sf single-family dwelling located on a relatively small, greenfield site on the banks of the Mississippi River in Memphis, Tennessee.

The architect embraced the livable community benefits of the new urbanism neighborhood while inserting a progressive intervention of robust sustainability. The fabric of vernacular-styled residences becomes a benefit to its expressive character.

It demonstrates the value progressive architecture can bring to occupants, as well as the community at large, for generations to come. It serves as a living laboratory and marker to how one might achieve design excellence by fully integrating a high-design, high-performance ethos while seeking iterative solutions to the larger world view of environmental justice.

Civitas embraces and celebrates the active lifestyle of the family of three while challenging the most basic of conventions - shelter for the occupants, and looking outward to the greater community in order to benefit the many.

As an immersive tool for experimental thinking and design exploration, Civitas lays the groundwork for ongoing study and future project implications with its broad application of high-performance design strategies for a wide range of typologies and scales.

From the outset, the design team chose the guiding principles from the AIA Committee on the Environment to set goals for equitable solutions, conservation and reclamation, onsite renewables, wellness and health, and change and adaptability.

Climate resiliency was central to these strategies, as the site is susceptible to flooding, severe weather, and ongoing activity from the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Civitas prioritizes clean energy with no fossil fuels sourced, producing more energy from onsite renewable than it consumes selling the excess back to the grid or charging of electric vehicles.

The project demonstrates a new perspective on integrating design, construction, and inhabitation globally. At its heart, Civitas is a home for today and tomorrow.

With a 200-year design life cycle, it will evolve and adapt to the way in which future occupants live and to a changing environment. It is a place of learning and inspiration as it advances the dialogue between homeowners and the profession as we move towards a carbon-neutral world.

Civitas is the world’s first dual-certified Zero Energy and Zero Carbon building by the International Living Future Institute; has an EUI of -2.6, and is certified LEED v4.1 Homes Platinum. Civitas was an AIA 2021 COTE Top Ten winner, the only project in its 25-year history to be certified Zero Carbon.