BY Allison Arieff
Every year, the National Association of Home Builders presents its vision for the New American Home, showcasing trends in home design and construction.
The association describes this effort as “America’s residential construction laboratory” and boasts that concepts first used in the New American Home project “often go on to become industry – and consumer – favorites.”
The idea of a residential construction laboratory is, in theory, great: Why not build a house that tests out the latest building and energy technologies, explores the functionality of different floor plans, and experiments with new materials and trends?
But in practice, it’s a failed experiment badly in need of a new hypothesis.