Subverting Suburbia

Next Gen Nota­bles: Sub­vert­ing Suburbia

“We are keep­ing the baby and we are using the bath­wa­ter to water our garden.”

A pub­lished online arti­cle about me and some friends get­ting a notable fin­ish in the 2009 Next Gen­er­a­tion Metrop­o­lis Mag­a­zine Design Com­pe­ti­tion. Mark Tir­pak, who is not men­tioned in the arti­cle, also helped–he is an urban plan­ner.  Sam Schonzeit did most of the archi­tec­ture work that I helped do ren­der­ing, and John Hart Asher did the land­scape design.

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Danish Cohousing

Cohous­ing: com­mu­ni­ties bal­ance the tra­di­tional advan­tages of shared com­mon facil­i­ties and on-going con­nec­tions with your neigh­bors. These coop­er­a­tive neigh­bor­hoods, both inter-generational and for elders, are among the most promis­ing solu­tions to many of today’s most chal­leng­ing social and envi­ron­men­tal concerns.

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Collective Food Market

This a col­lec­tive food mar­ket, a place where local farm­ers can bring pro­duce and goods to sell, local peo­ple can cook and there is more room to social­ize pro­vided than at reg­u­lar super-market. This makes it a more civic place, instead of solely com­mer­cial. Hav­ing more social space allows for higher sales and cre­ates a cul­ture of ‘reg­u­lars’ who hang out at the market.

Portable Classroom

Main Cat­e­gory: Green Build­ing Design
Cat­e­gory: Green Build­ing
Entrant: Uni­ver­sity of Texas at Austin
Size: 18 x 48 x 12
Total Square Feet: 864

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Alley Flat Prototype

Fall 2005


Ini­tial stu­dio for the alley flat ini­tia­tive.

eCO-Housing

The aim of this design study is  to pro­pose a spe­cific case of “co-housing” that expands the term to mean the coop­er­a­tive dwellings of humans and non-human residents.

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Forest Canopy Study Center

Solar D Marketable Prototype

Designed in 2007 for the Solar D Mar­ketable pro­to­type, a house designed to the needs of the mar­ket. It is larger [approx 1500 sq. ft.] than it’s coun­ter­part the Solar D entry for the Solar House Competition.

Sustainable Technologies: Paradigms and Practices

Sus­tain­able Tech­nolo­gies: Par­a­digms and Practices

or

If I was a deter­min­ist I would want to know that which often for­bids us to talk about what we can­not know.

>Jor­dan Parker Williams

Soci­ety, Nature and Technology

Posi­tion Paper II

16 Novem­ber 2006

Are we a prod­uct of tech­nol­ogy or tech­nol­ogy a prod­uct of humans? The very ques­tion itself is based on a false dichotomy.  It is based on a false par­a­digm or “map of human nature”, that of deter­min­ism.  We are a prod­uct of nei­ther nature nor nur­ture; we are a prod­uct of choice, because there is always a space between stim­u­lus and response, as we exer­cise our power to choose based on prin­ci­ples, the space will become larger.[i] The idea of deter­min­ism is deeply embed­ded into present day cul­ture and has rein­forced a cul­ture of vic­tim­iza­tion because of the ter­ri­fy­ing sense that if I do have choice, then I am also respon­si­ble for my present sit­u­a­tion.  If a per­son can say I am what I am and I am where I am because I so choose to be there, then that per­son can real­ize a state­ment of:  I choose other wise.  This is an impor­tant real­iza­tion of the human con­di­tion, admit­tedly far too often tech­nolo­gies are mar­keted with knee jerk responses to their use­ful­ness and seem all too agree­able; but—being human allows  us to choose, even in the most over­whelm­ing polit­i­cally set tra­jec­to­ries, we have the power to choose.

Com­monly in socio-technological stud­ies there are two cat­e­gories: 1) “tech­no­log­i­cal vol­un­tarist” advo­cat­ing that social sys­tems shape tech­nolo­gies and humans have a choice, voice, and con­trol over and in tech­nolo­gies and their tra­jec­to­ries and 2) “tech­no­log­i­cal deter­min­ist” who believe tech­nol­ogy has a set path and inevitable evo­lu­tion, pro­duc­ing arti­facts along the way.

In this posi­tion paper I will look at tech­nol­ogy through a vol­un­tarist lens to see how sus­tain­able par­a­digms and prac­tices can evolve and how “reflex­ive mod­ern­iza­tion” is best to allow us to evolve to a sus­tain­able future in which our choices in every­day deci­sions matter.[ii]

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The Ecological Design of Co-housing Power Point

Check out this early Power Point Pre­sen­ta­tion of my Mas­ter of Design Pro­posal from my research design class ’06 with Dr. Steven A. Moore. 

The Eco­log­i­cal Design of Co-Housing_2  The link above should down­load a .pdf. there were some con­ver­sion prob­lems but most of the text is ledg­i­ble and where it should be on the page.

• Pur­pose of Research: The aim of this design study is to pro­pose a spe­cific case of co-housing that expands the term to mean coop­er­a­tive dwellings of human and non-human res­i­dents, cre­at­ing a greater eco­log­i­cal place.This design of co-housing should appro­pri­ated to the site as to min­i­mize envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and to enhance what char­ac­ter­is­tics, qual­i­ties and species/beings are present and what could be present (i.e. intro­duc­ing native spe­icies, cre­at­ing archi­tec­ture that improves the qual­ity of life of future residents).
  • + I see a need to inte­grate the human envi­ron­ment and nature in development.
  • + Far too often nature is seen as stop­ping devel­op­ment, how can this be changed?
  • + Con­cepts of hous­ing like Co-housing are more sus­tain­able and can give res­i­dents more con­trol in their built envi­ron­ment.
     
     

• Appreciate what we have in terms of “everyday nature”

• Create more sustainable housing, reflecting and embracing nature can bring inspiration and more livelihood.

• Benefits of intertwining nature and human development can be better understood.

• Take ecological design of housing farther than LEED (energy efficiency)

• Expanding sustainability past the humancondition will create a more sustainable condition