Perspective
Project Outcomes Summary: In the final accounting, the project was built for $25,000 in purchased materials and services, plus $10,000 in donated materials and $5,000 in donated services. These costs represent about a $5,000 “premium” compared to Habitat’s typical costs of building a similar size (4-bedroom) house. Most of this premium is associated with the “up-grades” in the roofing, siding, and windows systems – all of which return value to the homeowner in reduced maintenance and lower energy costs.
The full project process and the design strategies utilized by the students were documented by Prof. Hinson in “Shelter for the Soul: the DESIGNhabitat Report”, a publication sponsored by the Home Depot Foundation which has been distributed to HFH affiliates across the US. The finished house has been toured by dozens of HFH Affiliate board groups, architecture student groups, and affordable housing advocates, and the design principles embedded in the project have had broad impact on the construction practices of affiliates across the state. Five additional DESIGNhabitat 1 houses have been constructed by affiliates across the state.
Student reflections: In essays written at the conclusion of the project, the students consistently cited working with the Johnson family, and the larger group of “advisor/clients” from Habitat as the source of the most meaningful learning experiences of the project – experiences which transformed their perception of the studio as well as their understanding of their role as future architects.
“In all 4 years of being at Auburn and doing studio projects, I have never been able to really understand "the client" as well as I have on this project. Being able to have so much interaction with the Johnson family while designing and building has given me a clearer and more meaningful idea of what being an architect means. Because of this interaction I feel that I have gained the valuable skill of being able to put myself into the client’s shoes with more sensitivity and purpose.”
Students also confronted the challenge of reconciling the different (and sometimes conflicting ) influences of multiple stakeholders – a challenge common to architectural practice but rare to the traditional studio.
“The fact that we were exposed to more than one client at the same time was one of the great learning experiences in the studio. (In discussions with a visiting lecturer), we discussed how having a design build studio in the manner that we did, mimicked the real world as much as was possible in academia, and maybe even more because we were not only dealing with and individual client, but the 10th largest homebuilder in America, which is a hell of a big client to convince to change. We learned how to “coax an elephant into the water without it knowing it was getting wet” in our dealings with all of the Habitat partners, which alone was enough to take from this semester.”
The design/build format, when applied to a studio of this size (sixteen 3rd and 4th Year students) presents the collaborative process in a different light than the traditional studio, where the principle activity to be shared is design.
“The challenge of working as a team was one experience that has had the biggest impact on both my architectural and personal thought process … I think group work requires a different kind of designer and communicator than the usual studio designer.” These students had never been challenged to consider issues of cost, material limitations, and the skill-level of the constructors. The design/build format presented all of these issues as subjects within the realm of architectural design and therefore within the domain of the architect. To often these issues are never introduced into the students experience of design and as a result are seen as foreign to (and in conflict with) the aspirations of architects.
“Studio has always been an outlet for self expression, never an inlet for client feedback. It is easy in studio to forget about the “client”. The Johnson family granted me a new and refreshing view of what architecture really is. Architecture is a about people and how our ideas play an important role in their lives.”
