summary
Intro
This project is an assessment of suburban and exurban housing characteristics in terms of ecological performance, in order to define more clearly the gap between resource and energy consumption of existing housing stock, and a hypothetically sustainable level of resource and energy consumption.
In response to this performance gap, I propose a series of individual house-scale retrofit options, targeted towards individual homeowners, but with the goal of reducing the overall energy and resource profile of a neighborhood as a whole.
Over the course of my investigation I have come to understand that design is profoundly intertwined with its sister societal constructs, policy and marketing. Any hope for real change must always be approached from all three angles if it is to have any chance of success.
Nevertheless, I think architects and other designers have a role to play in developing and implementing widespread strategies for raising awareness and changing residential housing performance, even in the suburbs where architects have had little influence in the past.
Background
-looked at foreclosure and vacancy as a symptom of poor planning and unhealthy suburban growth
-looked at demographics and poverty rates to get a picture of who is living in the suburbs
-looked at future trends in demographics and settlement patterns to get a picture of who will be living there in coming years, and to know how much money they might be able to invest in improving their home
-looked at energy use to try and figure out what the key area was to fix, found that there is no low-hanging fruit in single family housing of past 20 years
-looked at the resources going into and coming out of existing houses to figure out what the major flows are and look for key areas to influence
-looked at cost versus ROI and ecological benefit to create groupings of strategies
Design
-using this data and info; a building retrofit
-equally important, an interface to give the user real-time feedback - the Prius energy use readout screen equivalent for your house
In particular, this retrofit is designed for a typical suburban single-family home built within the past 20 years. As templates I chose two ubiquitous designs, one by a national builder/developer and one by a state-wide residential builder, both of whom operate locally. The retrofit is tailored to the energy and resource profile of cold-climate housing in the upper Midwest.
Beyond
-looked at real estate development to get a sense of how to market to consumers
-collaborated with landscape architecture student to discuss policy options and the characteristics of a high performance neighborhood
Conclusion
-what might be able to be changed
-the role of the designer
-how the designer might best work with the other parties
-as a hint, I spent a lot of time speaking with people from other disciplines
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