MSU students, graduates collaborate on ecosmart house in Bozeman

Work has started on an innovative, sustainable home that is being built in Bozeman, but the idea for the project was born more than a year ago when stars aligned in a curious Montana way in a restaurant near Leesburg, Va.

That’s where Bill Hoy, a corporate architect in Washington, D.C., first met Kitty Saylor, who is the president and CEO of REHAU North America. REHAU, a German firm whose American headquarters is in Leesburg, is an international innovator and manufacturer of polymer-based products and systems.

"Bill was talking about this house he wanted to build and he pulled out this photo that was unmistakably taken in Montana," Saylor recalled. "I said, ‘That’s Bozeman.’ And Bill said, ‘Do you know Montana?’ I said, ‘I’m from Montana.’ And he said, ‘Are you really, really from Montana?’"

In short time, the two discovered not only that they had attended MSU at the same time, but they had also lived just blocks away from each other while they were students on the Bozeman campus in the 1980s.

Terry Beaubois

Full Story: http://www.montana.edu/cpa/news/nwview.php?article=8539