Aerial view of Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans showing Make It Right projects.
Making It Right?
Flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and Brad Pitt’s foundation, Make It Right, asked many of the world’s most creative architects to help. The cover story in the current issue of Cite (81), written by Rafael Longoria, takes a critical look at that effort. I spoke with Tim Duggan, a Landscape Architect currently developing the Sustainable Landscapes program for the Make it Right Foundation, to get his responses. He will also be speaking this week at the Gulf Coast Green conference.
RM: Rafael Longoria wrote that the houses built by Make It Right so far “are hardly reproducible models outside the confines of a charismatic charity. In order to be truly sustainable, affordable housing must work within the realities of the market without relying on donated design, materials, or labor.” How can we evaluate sustainability and apply lessons learned to other affordable housing efforts without knowing actual construction costs for the houses?
TD: The costs will be easier to judge once we have achieved house 150, which is the goal of the organization. The cost to the homeowner is $150,000. There is gap funding between the sales cost and the true cost. Until we get to house 150, we won’t have a true cost. It’s hard to assess when engineering and design costs haven’t been amortized over the whole period. The goal is to get the true cost to $150,000 by house 150. Right now we are on house 45.
We’ve built one of the houses now five times and have drastically reduced the price through value engineering, healthy multi-disciplinary collaboration, stringent cost evaluations, and product and material assessment. We do that on every house. We sat down with contractors, landscape architects, and architects to figure out ways to make every design more cost effective.
The Billes Architecture home has now been built four times. The first house had 28 concrete columns. Further engineering and technical studies allowed us to have a cantelever which alleviated one full rail of columns and reduced concrete costs by a third.
On the Trahan Architects design, we explored advanced framing techniques, testing the wall section as a system (stud frame construction, insulation, hurricane clips)…We were able to increase spacing from 16 inches to 24 inches and achieve code approval from the international code council. We reduced our lumber package by a third.
For solar power, we received bids for $24,000 to put 4 kilowatts of solar power in a house. We broke that into time, labor, and material. We found huge labor costs for the roof penetrations and waterproofing. A collaborative approach found a hurricane-rated solar mounting clip, reducing labor 75 percent and total cost to $14,000.
Every house we figure out how to do more affordably. We are not in any way saying we are at the point where we want to be.
RM: Those are impressive figures. The Trahan house features a sensuous curving trellis over the side porch. In the Cite article, Longoria writes, “The louvers were intended to contain integrated photovoltaic and water heating features, but it does not appear those ideas survived the MIR value engineering process. Worse yet, in their second house built by MIR, the trellis disappeared altogether.”
TD: The trellis was never anticipated to have photovoltaic. The second house used a solid shade at the request of the homeowner. We are building for homeowners. They are paying for the house. Their requests are the most important ones. The most important part of the project is getting houses to people.
Our approach to value engineering is to figure out a way to make components affordable, not to remove pieces from the house.
House designed by Trahan Architects, photo courtesy Trahan Architects.
RM: In the renderings for the EDR design, there were beautiful perforated screens for the front façade and entry stoop, some laser-cut to show a pixilated portrait of Fats Domino. I was sad to see that the screen did not make it onto the actual house.
TD: There is a constant dialogue about what is affordable. Some of those elements have to be dealt with through collective dialogue. The screen made with a water-jet CNC-router was not affordable. We look for happy mediums.
House designed by EDR. Photo by Charlie Varley.
Residents of an EDR-designed house. Photo by Rafael Longoria.
RM: Make It Right brought star architects from around the world. For example, Shigeru Ban is known for innovative materials and structures. Was it a challenge to implement their visions at a local level. Did any of the star architects complain about the final product or ask that their names be removed?
TD: There’s always a dialogue betwen design wants and the realities. Shigeru Ban came to the site, met the homeowner, and was pleasantly surprised. Through the history of time, there will always be debates between architect and contractor. It’s not unique to Make It Right.
House designed by Shigeru Ban.
RM: At a recent lecture in New Orleans, James Timberlake of KieranTimblerake, one of the firms that participated, expressed hope that MIR will move from “stick-built” homes to more reproducible prefabricated homes.
TD: We explore SIP (Structural Insulated Panels), modular, and stick-frame. We want to identify opportunities and constraints for each of those systems so we as an organization can learn what’s best for New Orleans.
RM: I understand you just came back from Haiti. Did the experience in New Orleans inform the work there or is it a completely different economic and cultural situation?
TD: I was not there under the umbrella of Make It Right. I used vacation days. I went down with a group called Louisiana Haiti Sustainable Village Project, a group of 20-25 local non-profits seeking to help the folks of Haiti. One of the big opportunities we had was to bring lessons we learned after Katrina. MIR doesn’t having anything formal or informal in Haiti at the moment. Our focus was address immediate needs such as food, energy, and shelter, and for the longterm look at planning, infrastructure, and alternative energy sources.
RM: Is there still a major international presence or is the attention fading?
TD: There was still a lot of energy — NGOs, military troops from around the world. We were along the Southern cost in a town called Jacmel. We were able to successfully navigate and build relationships with local stakeholders and decision-makers. We took a barge from New Orleans full of over 100,000 cubic feet of cargo that included food, medicine, shelters, solar panels, and mobile generators. The solar was mobile, and dedicated to the Ciné Institute and the mayor’s office.
RM: What were the lessons learned from Katrina that applied to Haiti?
TD: To be proactive instead of reactive, to find opportunity in a time of crisis, to be strategic – don’t just spend tax money to build tents that will blow away in three weeks. Use waste as reusable materials. To drive transformative change. To change the structure of energy, power, infrastructure, and education.
RM: Are you going to make a pitch to Brad Pitt for an effort in Haiti?
TD: Brad Pitt is already active in Haiti in terms of donations and financial partnerships. At Make It Right, we do not want to lose site of finishing the project in New Orleans.
RM: What will you talk about in Houston at Gulf Coast Green?
TD: The presentation will be geared towards community beyond housing, a proactive response to stormwater mitigation, creating streets and neighborhoods that collect water as a resource rather than move it away as a detriment. In New Orleans, the Lower 9th Sustainable Infrastructure Project has a heavy hitting team. We are very close to breaking ground on a project. It includes 8 city blocks of zero run-off streetscape and infrastructure improvements.
RM: Thank you for speaking with me. I hope to see you at Gulf Coast Green.
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Filed Under: Disaster, Interviews
Michael T. Mounce writes:
04.14.10
2:30 pm
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Filo Castore writes:
04.28.10
11:03 pm
The American Institute of Architects (www.aia.org) just announced on Earth Day last week the AIA Committee on the Environment Top Ten Projects. One of the Make it Right first prototypes (from Kieran Timberlake) was included. More info at http://www.aiatopten.org/hpb/#2010
Terrence T. Emerson writes:
08.14.10
3:43 pm
I have property in that area and would welcome the opportunity to have someone from the design field to explore my options