You can't stop Mother Nature, but you can build smarter homes that are more adept at taking a lashing. That's the idea behind the 3C competition which is on exhibit through Saturday in Manhattan.

The group behind 3C is Operation Resilient Long Island (ORLI), a grassroots organization founded by students at the New York Institute of Technology's School of Architecture and Design after Superstorm Sandy struck the area in late October 2012.

ORLI co-chair Dan Horn was in his home in Lindenhurst on the south shore of Long Island when Sandy hit. His neighborhood and home were badly damaged. As a fourth-year architecture student at the time, the storm forced he and his classmates to take a closer look at building for the next coastal storm.

Weather in your inbox

Forecast Location

Sign Up

By signing up you agree to the Terms & Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe at any time.

"The whole thing had me thinking 'What can we do as architecture students to respond to the storm?'" Horn said in an interview with weather.com.

ORLI worked with local officials to tour areas damaged by the storm, and then put together a pamphlet for homeowners to explain how rebuilding for future storms may save their houses. They also came up with the idea for a competition that would challenge designers to re-imagine homes and neighborhoods in the New York tri-state area.

The competition attracted more than 60 entries from designers around the world, which went before a panel of judges.

Horn says the winning designs presented "a resilient housing typology and something that's sustainable and looks at solar power capabilities." The winning designs also stand out, he added, because they looked at a community's master plan and figured out how to "fit that new house into the existing context or the neighborhood."

(MORE: Sandy's Epic Devastation)

The first exhibit in Manhattan comes to an end this weekend, but Horn says ORLI hopes to display the ideas in other communities impacted by Sandy.

"We are interested in more engaging dialogue between the homeowners and the finalists, and maybe showing their designs to someone who can has more say and can implement those designs," he added.

You can see the top three designs in the slideshow above, and read more about ORLI on the group's Facebook page and the 3C competition here.

{"id":"wxn2","type":"wxnode_content_well","schema_version":"1.1.12","contentwell":"\n

<\/div>\n\n\n