Focus 580; Good Deeds, Good Design: Community Service Through Architecture

In this part of focus 580 will be talking about movement within the field of architecture to try to bring those kind of design services to a larger kind of group. Because one of the things that we know is that only a tiny percent and one of the figures that has been cited in fact is 2 percent just 2 percent of new homebuyers ever work directly with an architect to design the space in which they will live for most people. This is a luxury that they simply cannot afford. However as I say there is this growing movement within design field to serve a broader population particularly people who are on the lower end of the income spectrum. And this morning we'll be talking with Brian Bell. He's founder of design core which is a nonprofit agency that provides architecture to those traditionally under served by the profession he is also the editor of a collection of articles or essays dealing with this movement within architecture. His book is titled good deeds good design community service through architecture. It's published by the Princeton architectural

press. And if you're interested I'm sure that you could find it at a bookstore near you or you can go to their website which is w w w dot P.. A press dot com and get in. Formation on the book as we talk. Questions are welcome. That's always the case. And if you want to call in here the number if you're in Champaign-Urbana is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have the toll free line. So if it would be a long distance call use that number and that he's eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 again 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 4 Champaign Urbana toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. Mr. Bell. Hello. Good morning. Thanks very much for talking with us. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. I read an article about you this appeared in The New Orleans paper The Times Picayune talking a little bit about your background and how you got into this. And I thought I might ask you about to talk a bit about that in the beginning and

according to this article you had it in quote a cushy job as an architect with a Manhattan firm and I'm not exactly sure what exactly that means but you were working in the big city when you designed decided to to move away from that to do something very different. I'm sure working for a very different kind of clientele. Right. How did you how did you. Making the move. Well it's interesting that when I went into architecture I had no idea that I was really entering a sort of luxury service and it wasn't until I graduated from Yale architecture school with a masters and went to work in Manhattan. I actually got the job I wanted but I pretty quickly realized that this was not. That's a feeling to me and I was pretty frustrated by the very tight group of up jobs and really more of the social status and of design rather than really what I believe designed to be which is something that can really help people out in

their day to day lives and also address some of our more important social issues. So fairly quickly I became disillusioned with that path which I I'm afraid is a pretty typical path for most graduates like myself. And so I just started looking for alternatives. And frankly I was also feeling pretty redundant. And New York it seems that everybody my classmates all go to either New York or Chicago or San Francisco so there is a tremendous concentration of power there whereas there are huge areas in the country that don't seem to have any body who can provide designs. So my. I sort of search led me to rural Pennsylvania where my younger sister was working with migrant farm workers and she was telling me about the terrible housing situation they had. And it just sort of struck me that hey this was a place

that I would actually be needed and I could help people with basic shelter and apply my benefits to my very own fortunate education and energy to something that I seem to be more have more social benefits than what I was doing. That's sort of was my it was I call it a very early midlife crisis from basically right out of school and it's been great that was 15 years ago and I have not looked back it's it's really been the direction I wanted to go but I've learned a lot along the way and and continue to learn and find others doing this work. Well tell us about the first thing that you designed once you started thinking in this way and saw that there was this particular need. The first building that you did. Sure. Well fortunately I was able to visit many migrant camps in Pennsylvania. The first step and I think one of the best things I

learned is that I didn't know anything about migrants. And I fortunately said to myself I didn't. Because architects have a tendency to think we know everything and I don't know. I don't know how we come up with that but it gets us into or gets into a lot of problems and alienates us from people when we think we know more about what they want than than they do. So fortunately I was able to visit migrant camps and talk to a lot of migrants but also talk to farmers about what they were providing. And I began to realize that there was some real. There were obvious social problems and and substandard housing. But I began to identify that some of the types of housing were causing problems and I'll give you an example. The main type of housing that was being provided was called a bull pen which was just a big open room with lots of single males in it. Now these these were

migrants coming from several different countries. And because of this type of housing it required a crew leader. Well if you checked with the counseling IT department of labor it was the crew leaders that were generally causing the problem over charging for food. And not keeping up the quality of the housing. So in other words this type of housing caused some problems because it necessitated a crew leader. So what we did was we looked at other types and realized that the smaller unit of housing that could house for five people that were already friends that maybe came together in a car could live together. And that may seem more expensive and it is but we also got grant funding to help pay for the cost. And what I say to farmers I'd say you know if I'm living with a hundred other guys I'm not going to go in and clean the bathroom. But if I'm living with four other friends you know we'll take care of then I'll make sure that you take your turn. So that was the kind of sort of

simple commonsense thing that I learned that led to a better idea in housing then what was being built currently. And it sounds like it would be the kind of thing where people would have a little bit more of a feeling of personal space rather than living in something it would have been like a barracks exact. Exactly and there were language problems and fights and in the in the larger housing and. You know that's not something the farmer wanted but he was kind of stuck with that because of that type of housing. The other thing that was happening at the time this was back in 19th late 1980s and a lot of families were beginning to travel in the migrant stream because of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. So a single guy who was working became a resident legal resident and was able to bring his family along with him. Well the housing was a disaster for trying to accommodate families. So these smaller units were able to either accommodate some single guys or if the farmer wanted to he could

hire a family that could move right into the single unit. So that's the kind of you know it's it may seem sort of clear but I don't think that people that aren't trained in architecture sometimes can identify why these problems are happening and also bringing in the extra funding to help with the construction costs. Made it the cheaper end product for the farmer than the larger housing in fact. So it was I like to think of it as a win win. So it is so it seemed to function better for the individuals. And as far as the the farmers were concerned they were actually saving money it was costing them less. But I suppose that was in part because some of the funding was coming from there. They didn't have to provide all of the funding themselves. That's right they put up 50 percent of the construction funds and the Pennsylvania Department of Housing put up 50 percent. Now the living is out of the great deal because they're used to paying 100 percent so all of a sudden they had a 50 percent match

coming from the private sector. Farmer thought it was great because he's had to pay for the whole thing before. And it was also a benefit to the farmer because I would explain that if he's able to attract his workers back again then he doesn't have to retrain them so there was definite economic incentive for the farmer to use this program. What sort of longevity did these buildings have. Well the first ones we built was seven years ago and I have gone back every year and they look great. So we're we look at them every year to see how they do. We definitely build them to last the farmer commits to a 20 year compliance period. He has to maintain it for 20 years. We don't actually just give them the 50 percent of construction. Cause he he asked do well maintain it for 20 years and then after that then he is. He doesn't own the building outright but so we don't come to last for 20 years and 7 years then where we're doing pretty well.

Our guest this morning in this part of focus 580 is Brian Bell he is the founder of design corps this is a nonprofit agency that provides architecture to people traditionally under served by the profession and they're pretty much we're talking about much most of America. Well certainly most of America has has not used and will never use the services of an architect. But one of the reasons that a lot of people won't is that they just don't have that kind of money he has edited a book which looks at this movement with an architecture that's titled good deeds good design community service through architecture. And it is published by the Princeton architectural press and questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 just you touched on something and maybe you might want to amplify on an. And that is the what it is that someone trained in architecture can bring to a design problem like this. I think that it is the case that most you know most people are living in some kind of a structure that

somebody somewhere has designed but it's the designs are fairly generic. At least we're talking about single family housing and that maybe it can be altered in small ways by the contractors who build them but sometimes it's the only people who are doing that kind of designing to accommodate people's needs are the contractors. Right. And that they're as we've said it just a tiny percentage of people could ever afford to go to an architect and start with a blank piece of paper and say I want you to build something for me and this is what I would like it to look like I mean what do people get what do people get. Even in situations like this when they have the services of an architect that a builder couldn't. Couldn't do with existing kind of plans or just by making something up right. Well in every house design there's thousands of design decisions being made and what I mean by design decisions is basically how are you spending the money you have to build that house.

Now in a lot of developer or contractor build housing you may be involved in a few of those decisions. But when a designer is involved and taking the approach that we're talking about here the designer will first try to understand what's most important to your family and help you allocate the resources to address those needs. Now if the architects haven't listened to you carefully they'll fail because they won't know your priorities. So let me give you an example a couple of examples and I. I work with as you said very low income families. The houses cost about eighty five thousand dollars to build. So you wouldn't think there was a lot of room for what we all think of as architecture and a lot of times what we visualize by that as meaning that we lower the budget. Well a $5000 is all there is there's no there's no option of spending more for these families. But.

There was one family I'll give you an example of a farm worker family. Now the eight year old son was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. And I went to visit the family in their housing and it was a three room apartment that the farmer phoned and it was a family of five there. So I sat down in the valley there are two bedrooms and everything else room and. Lorenzo was trying to do his homework at the table while the TV was on while the mother was cooking while I was talking. I mean it drove me crazy and I was just trying to talk and he was trying to do homework. I realized I didn't believe he had attention deficit at all. It was the it was the poor accommodation of that design. So when we designed a house for them it was just eleven hundred square feet. But what we did was we made it a two story house so that there was more privacy between the downstairs and upstairs and where the

stairs came up. We extended the outside wall by three feet which gave a desk a space for the three boys including one Renzo. So all of the sudden the very critical aspect of education for one of the boys with accommodated with a very no extra money just a re privatization of how they were spending that money. And. And in other words in exchange the living room was a little bit smaller but it really was barely noticeable. In order to get that that study area. So that's the type of thing where something really important to a family can be a. Accommodated and I'm talking about day to day living not not something fancy. But this is something that I can really help and I get that. That's the way I describe what I try and do I try to really help and. But it really takes listening first and an understanding of who you're trying to serve. And I think that's you know

architects are guilty of not really demonstrating a service is of value and I think we need to redefine our own services and stop trying to build a Taj Mahal to ourselves that that was the term I first heard when I left architecture school and somebody described what they thought of architects was that we build Taj Mahal for ourselves that bust the budget. So I think we need to do some pretty serious re-evaluation of what we're trying to do and and how we can help. You talked about building a house for eighty five thousand dollars now for by real world standards. Now that we have a lot of people who are living in homes that cost a quarter million dollars and up and a lot of them. Up you know half a million dollars million dollars by those standards. Eighty five thousand dollars doesn't seem like a lot of money and yet to me eighty five thousand dollars is a lot of money. Is that is there some sort of bottom some sort of floor here

past which you'd say you just can't you can't do something that will provide good quality housing for a family for less than that. Well that's a good question. I I I think 85000 in the areas I've worked is sort of a floor but let's let's kind of take this on a little bit further than just housing. I do think in some ways homeownership opportunities is the best opportunity for design because it's it's one family and it's their particular environment and you can be very specific about their needs and with the increasing homeownership rates in this country it has been not an opportunity for people who have never been able to shape their own environment to become involved. And I guess I would summarize what I try and do is letting people be involved in the decisions that shape their lives. And that may seem like a pretty obvious thing that everybody wants to do. And and I that's why I think design is important to

everybody because. The environment what you the the routines you have every day how well they may convenience you or inconvenience you or accommodate such things as education and health. Those that the decision that people should have a right if they're buying a house to be able to shape. But but there are many more cases of design that don't involve $85000 sometimes. One of my favorite projects involves a bench a public bench in a small town a racially segregated town and Alabama. And this was done by a student. And it you know it gave the African-Americans there a value of the liberty of sitting downtown in a way that they had not had before and that was that was a project that cost probably about $20. It

actually did more for that town. Socio politically than probably anything it done and 30 years. So I don't. Again I don't want to acquaint design with cost. And I think their design to me is about careful consideration of people so they can be $20 or it can be two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Is there somebody who is who is doing this kind of work similar to the kind of things that that you have been doing to try to provide some housing for migrant workers. Doing this in an urban environment. Well that's a that's a wonderful question because there are people doing this all over and it's the you know migrant farm workers happens to be my own cause but. There are people working and pretty much every state and every city. And this is not really a new movement. But I think this generation is taking on. Good

run at it and giving it some new energy. There is a city design center in Chicago run by river to film and it's doing wonderful work. There are city design centers and in many cities and there are also I mean I was pretty much in the trenches and I didn't realize what was happening in the trenches you know 10 feet away from me. And so one of the great things that's been happening is we've all started to talk and exchange ideas and realize that we all have more or less the same intent which is expanding the benefits of design to a greater sector of the public. So one of the purposes of this book was to put all these ideas together so we could learn from each other and just start to establish a dialogue. And I hope they're they're pretty honest. There was a review recently that they were disarmingly honest which I thought was funny but we do want to share not

just where we've succeeded but how we've made mistakes so that others or you can avoid those. There there are 30 essays by 30 different practitioners and that's not to say by any stretch. That's all there are in the country and one of the fun things about doing the book was finding more and more people that are doing the same thing and also realizing you know what a great number of the students that are coming out of school want to do this type of work so hopefully we're defining a little bit of an alternative path for some of the 30000 architecture students that are in school right now and that they won't have to take 10 years as I did to try and figure out how to do this type of work. Well also if you touch a little bit earlier you seem to be making an argument to that that the profession if the profession is going to survive that it's got to try to broaden its mandate that the.

The architecture profession if it's only going to serve 2 percent of the population is and isn't well and I suppose that doesn't doesn't take account of public buildings but we're still talking about a small percentage of the population that if the profession doesn't find some way to broaden its constituency that that it's not going to be able to survive. That's right. Even with the public works there's a very it's a very competitive field right now and we need to find those new clients we need to find the new jobs instead of just fighting for the few that are out there. I like to many of many architects will enter competitions and put hundreds of hours of work into a project that they may have one out of 400 chance of winning. And my suggestion to them is to try and find a local community group or a low income family and dedicate that same time to working with them and a real project may develop out of that and

probably a much better odds than one out of four hundred. So for some reason we tend we seem to be as much as we talk about valuing our originality in some of our professional models we're very much like sheep and we seem to all do the same thing. So trying to look at alternative methods of getting paid by low income families and alternative methods of finding jobs. I pretty much now any job I work on I can tell you there is no other architect involved and if there is another architect involved or interested in the project I'll just say great hug go find another one. But there are so many many opportunities. I was recently at the Boston architectural Center which is an alternative school and they had a lot of interest in doing this work but there were students interested the administration was interested the faculty were interested they said but we don't know any projects out there and I said well let's

have the easiest part. And you have everything you need already. You can you can probably find a project walking from within one mile of here. So and in fact when I was driving out of town I mean a taxicab I looked over and there was the HUD building with a garden on the corner that was totally abandoned. And so I called back and I said well you may have a project about six blocks away from your school. It looked like somebody had done a I had planned for a nice garden but nobody had really executed anything there for the residents. So it was kind of fun to be proven that it was true that these projects are pretty easy to find. Let me introduce Again our guest and we have a couple of callers. Get right to. We're talking this morning with Brian Bell. He is director of Design Corps It's a nonprofit architecture firm based in Raleigh North Carolina that he founded in 1991. He's also taught community design build at three architecture schools. In

1995 he started the design Corps fellowship program which allows recent graduates to design for the underserved and that's really the idea of design core that is to bring the services of architects and to design in housing to people traditionally underserved by the profession. And if you're interested in reading some more on this subject you could look at a book that he has edited collection of essays on this. This kind of movement and this approach within architecture the book is titled good deeds good design community service through architecture and it is published by the Princeton architectural press 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 is the local telephone number if you like to call in if you have a question or comment. Also we have a toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us and that is aid. Hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 we have a couple of callers here first one in Aurora on our toll free line. Hello. Yes hi good morning. Yes very interesting to hear about what you're doing.

I am listening very intently but I wonder if you could explain. I go out of doors a lot. And I'm out in the country and I see these huge huge houses and I know that only one or two people live in them. You know just couples. I fact I had a friend that lived in one of these houses and they had to get a somebody in to clean the windows with a 12 foot ladder. And a huge rush to clean way up in the ceilings and the windows. And I suppose those people build those houses. Is it a want or a need there. Well I certainly wouldn't believe it's a need and I I think you're right. And in a lot of ways they're probably making a lot harder to live in there. One of the ideas out it's under

discussion among architects is trying to present the difference between quality space and quantity of space. And I think that a lot of times there is a misreading of advertisements and houses. That's how big it is and and really the experience of that space may be terribly. Uninspired and and boring and inconvenient. And I don't think I think there that the definition of what design is and what it can do for people is is very poor and we need to we need to work on that but I think you're very right that there is a tremendous difference between quality and quantity. And when I say quality I don't mean expensive. I mean something that considers who is using it and and addresses the solution carefully. So it's a really good point. I I think they probably you know end up using probably 25

percent of the house. That's my guess. And of course they still have to heat and cool it so. But I think it's just a misguided notion of what design isn't it. And it's sort of that social status side of things rather than accommodating people who they are sort of expressing the way the character and qualities of people. And I'm not I'm not talking about just functional space here I'm talking about space that also does have respect for the spiritual side in the sort of a value side of people. So it's it's but it doesn't have to be done with just a huge room. When I see these housing developments and they're all the same time type of house. I'm sorry I sound negative but I think they're all the people in the same ilk and prominence and dominance and that

kind of thing. The housing development which I'm sure they don't call it that what do they call it in a fancy neighborhood. They don't call it a housing development do they. Well that that's a technical term for it yeah but they might have a better name I have a name they like better yeah. Yeah I'm sure they do. And I think well everybody's the same way. And so they all gather in the same spot. OK I just saw what and I I just I just think it's a waste of space for. Well thank you so much. OK. Well thanks for the call. Well you know I think that Mr. Bell that there are probably some number of people that would agree with the caller and and would have concerns about that trend and design and build to two very large two for single family homes being very large structures maybe more space than people really need. So maybe a lot of wasted space maybe

buildings that don't pay a lot of attention to energy efficiency in either design or construction. But you maybe you wonder that part of the reason that people are attracted to that is that's what they see and that there aren't a lot of models of a different cause. Kind of building something that might be a little bit more thoughtfully designed that would be more energy efficient that would use space better. But that also if people walked through and got an idea of what it would be like to live there they would compare that with one of these other kinds of styles of houses and say in fact that they liked the the smaller space better. Right. But that they don't have that they don't often have the chance to make that kind of comparison. That's right. And let me be clear I'm not I'm not criticizing anybody. Everybody has a right to live and a house of their choice or ideally everybody would have that I'm not going to criticize people who.

Choose a subdivision house or a large house my point is that if there were a calf if there was careful consideration given they might realize that the way they're spending their funding is really could be better spent in other ways. So I think that you I think you're exactly right if it comes down to understanding the choices you make and how well I'll accommodate you and and what your goals are. So that's that's important. And I think architects need to be careful not to transfer our own values even with some values that we may feel are universal such as conserving resources. It it's it's a person's house and I think that they have a right to express themselves. And I guess that's our job is to help help people understand what they want in the house and how how to express that in three dimensions. And I'm not

again we're not saying that the wealthy shouldn't have architects but unfortunately it's only the wealthy at this point that seem to have the benefit of an architects input. Well we have some other people to talk with let us do that and there we have two callers here they're both in Urbana. So first line number one. Hello good morning. I agree that with what you're saying but it seems like your ideas are going against what is a common practice which I dislike of having builders who don't work with architects putting up what people call MC mansions and the financial community which will give mortgages to these things. And you're right in many cases they're there too big poorly designed on the inside energy inefficient for size alone in the way they're going to be used to it. Like the one other caller said to three people living in 5000 square feet of

enclosure. Right. So how do you get yourself started to offer people proof. For young people who are getting what's in what was called a starter home. Right. To think about the effective use of space that they like. And I'll hang up and listen. Well thanks for the call. Well let me go back to the statistic that David mentioned earlier which is that architects only work with 2 percent of the home new homebuyers. And so I the challenge for architects is how do we increase that increase at 2 percent. And the future of architecture is that it will either decrease as we have these competition as you point out of the developers and the spec builders and the mansions and they're there trying to decrease that

2 percent and I guess my point here is we need to increase that 2 percent and bring the benefit of choice to people such as starter Hauser's. Now the how do we do that. I think we need to look at alternative methods of service and that's certainly what these essays are about. And how do we how can we provide new methods of working with families. I have a program I called DirecTV design and it's a five it's five meetings with a new home buyer. Talk about what how they live and what their priorities are for their house. Now in five meetings you can get a lot accomplished and it doesn't cost that much but it really helps them realize some of the most important things to them in their new house. Now if they're just looking at a few party built houses they're never able to go through a process. And it's it's one of the things

that I think architects have a value. We we can take people through a process to identify what the what the needs are. And so there are so many examples of how this happens and really where the architect is able to give shape to what's in the mind and heart of the family or whole community. And I think when people realize that that's what architects can do we'll start to have more customers and we'll be able to expand who we help. So that's sort of the optimistic future and that sort of cause we're all fighting for but I think it's up to the architects to prove what we can do. And it's not it's our fault and it's our problem. And we have to demonstrate that we have a valuable service. Let's talk with someone else this is also in Urbana listener. Number two. Hello.

Good morning. I just tuned into your program so I apologize if you've already addressed the issues I'm going to raise. I had two issues I was hoping that your guest could discuss. The first is if he thinks that there is a relationship between consumption in terms of the amount of stuff that we have and think we need today and housing sizes. And the second issue is the implications for changes in architecture and home building if oil prices continue to go up and stay higher in the future. Seems that will need to be building denser communities so that people don't have to be driving as much. And I think density scares a lot of people because they haven't seen it necessarily done well but it can be done well. I was hoping that your guest might be able. Come on are the two things that are lining up in rows. All right well thank you. Well again let me I need to be very careful about separating my own values from the values of anybody else who wants to build a house and let me let me give you an

example about the family the very first family I ever worked with was in rural Mississippi. And I understand the value of pedestrians and not using fossil fuel for car transportation. But this was a family in rural Mississippi who had no side running water or plumbing. And they could move to the the nearest city and get HUD housing with plumbing and with all the modern amenities. But their tradition and their history was in a rural community and they were afraid of what the city would do to their children who were all honor students at the local public school. So the other thing about this family that's really unique it was a two parent family and it was the father called pulpwood and he had sort of being the rural equivalent of somebody collecting aluminum cans. But it was such a strong family

unit that the father the father's income was less than they would have received if he had left the family. So when I realized that and realized how little money they made it was a it was just so poetic to me that the values of this family. So we designed a house for them where the father's truck which actually didn't even have a hood on it could be accommodated by and this was the truck that he collected the pole put in could be accommodated by the house. So there's a place for him to work and repair his truck. And when the truck was there when the father was there the sort of composition was complete. So it's a it's a case where their values were rural You know they relied on their car for their living. So I think. I agree with you personally. But at the same time what I can't do as a designer is impose my values on other people.

And I think when architects do that is when there's conflict and the House does not end up accommodating that individual. So it's a tough question I'd love to I love to say that yes we shouldn't let anybody use cars and the pedestrian is the way of the future but that's really a route that's really an urban priority. And there are cases where other have other values. So again it's very important for me not to transpose my own values on to people in their housing. Well I can appreciate that I think the caller probably could appreciate that maybe. Let me ask you about the other question though there. If indeed we find ourselves in the future paying a lot more for energy. Yeah. And it seems likely that we will that that's it seems that then that's going to feed back to how we design and build buildings because we're going to want to be

as energy efficient as possible. And then you know there is and maybe this is again more of a an. Urban sort of issue that is that the density question and do in fact you think that people are scared of the idea of people having people lived too close together. No not at all. And I do think that as you know our costs and our not just the cost of fuel but the environmental costs of fuel go up people's values will reflect that. There's no question if it's a monthly check you're right that's a pretty immediate impact on your. But if it's also impacting such things as asthma and there we breathe I think that has a pretty immediate impact on people with our youth as well. But no I think density is a is a personal choice. And I do think that there are tremendous conveniences and values to a high density situation. But there are also alternative values to the

rural lifestyle. And I don't. Again I think both need designers. I guess it's I don't think design is sort of more one than the other. I think design should have an ability to tramp to cover all all needs and all different varieties of lifestyle. We're about 10 minutes left in this part of focus 580 with our guest Brian Bell. He is an architect. He is the founder of design courts a nonprofit agency that provides architecture to people who traditionally have not been served by the professor. Of architecture generally people in the lower end of the income scale His firm is based in Raleigh North Carolina and he founded in 1991. We have some other people here with a question so we'll go next to a caller in Homer. That's line number one. Hello. Are you pro Miller with the regatta Longmont Colorado and they build a subdivision out there where there was a garage apartment behind the

elders. Yeah familiar with that yet. Yes I think that's a wonderful approach to integrating an affordable Eaton. We call him grandmother flat sometimes but it could be for a student. Yes I think that's a wonderful way of mixing incomes within one community. Oh. Where I was raised in a city down in action in Florida in Jacksonville we lived in a house that had a garage apartment behind it and my dad bought the house particularly because he could rent out the garage apartment and help him with the payment on the house. Yeah great solution that also that gave. We had it we had a single person living in the apartment and it actually it was called higher density which is what we need and we have a neighborhood grocery store and you know we just stayed right in the neighborhood My father worked in the neighborhood and his concept in Longmont which I think there are some other developments like that around the country. Heard about him in if

if to make it affordable for architects I think for people to use an architect. The developer in Longmont that they developed the subdivision and constricted the euro restricted the builders to build a certain design and you know and it was spread over a lot of how the so it was cost effective to have an architect in that sense. Do you think. That would restrict urban sprawl and if it was done all that out of scale. Well I think there you know in a community a certainly some shared values and that can be reflected in the same type of housing. And but then there are always you know the differences between us too and I. I kind of like to celebrate that what's unique about us. But yeah I come from New Orleans where we have wonderful housing stock of a double shotgun houses and sometimes those are for two families. Sometimes they're

converted to be for one family. And so there can be some common elements that can reduce costs through repetition. But then it's also I think ideal when the unique aspect and unique needs of everybody can be also accommodated. So but I think. You know your point about the additional income of the grandmother's fiat I think is a really good point and it's kind of the the sort of broader thinking that that architects need to take if I will. We did a house for a young couple that wanted to run a daycare and it was just at the time when the Federal Housing sources were saying that that was allowed for a long time they wouldn't allow any additional income by the house. So we designed a house that the it would get to. It was a two story so that the family had privacy Upstairs

Downstairs the open floor plan accommodated the daycare so that actually allowed them to buy the house which otherwise they couldn't afford it. Now that may seem a little strange and not really what people learn in architecture school to do but. That's the type of thing that I think makes. My service a value to somebody and give a sort of a broader understanding of what their needs are. So yes I totally agree there is there needs to be an understanding of how to save costs. And I think manufactured housing is really we've had it for a long time but I think it's really developing some interesting new variations. Roberta Feldman who I mentioned earlier did a invited exhibit called out of the box where she invited designers to make proposals for well designed manufactured housing. And I think that's going to be an exhibit in Chicago soon. So it's there are ways to save money and architecture should

be very responsible and economical with people funding. But you know the Internet is also an exciting new way. We just ordered a car and we were able to design it to to a limited degree on the Internet. And so you can have some customisation ability in the near future probably with House plans by using internet and some of this three dimensional graphic tool. So I think I think we're headed in the right direction and some people refer to this as a movement I like to think of it as a progression. Sort of an obvious progression that is happening in other in other areas like you can custom design your own blue jeans and order them on the internet so. So it's a way we're moving and I think of it as an expansion and it's to me it's exciting and I think when people realize the the impact of designing their own home and their own environment and their own

community that it's going to be an increasing and popular approach. OK I want to ask one more question if you could be quick. There is the big house that you're talking about it. Should should we have a lot even though people have the money to build on my mean after energy costs if they continue to increase which looks likely. I mean this affects all of us I'm sure that. Should they be able to have their ideals and or should we restrict them from the development point of view you know in the development idea when the developers didn't go in on something that you read which restricted development so they're energy efficient and not right. Yeah and I can it would be. I can give you about a minute to respond. Well I do think that when there when when individuals are costing the community that there are ways of approaching that and there may be some sort of environmental impact

study is used or there's a tax for energy consumption. But yes this isn't you know Montana and 18 to 70 this is we're we're all living together and we have responsibilities and I do think if we if people are doing things that are harmful there are ways of accommodating and dissuading that disadvantage for the community in general. Well there we will leave it to with the suggestion again if there are people who would like to read more about this movement within architecture you can look for the book that we've mentioned it's titled good deeds good design community service through architecture edited by our guest Brian Bell. The book is published by the Princeton architectural press and if you're interested in finding out more information about design Corps the company that the agency that Brian Bell founded they do have a website. And if you have internet access you can go to the website it's w w w dot design core dot org and you can learn more about them and Mr. Bell

thank you very much for talking with us. Well thank you so much David for having me.