In 2018, Rural Studio founded the Front Porch Initiative (Front Porch) with the mission of increasing access to high-performance homes throughout the South and beyond. Front Porch works with housing providers in under-resourced communities, providing support, technical assistance, and architectural resources. Our research and innovation are supported and enhanced by a range of government and industry relationships. This range of partnerships allows us to think holistically about the larger systems—such as policy, insurance, and finance—that influence housing access and affordability. The resulting homes are not only beautiful, well-designed, and high-performance but also affordable.
In the beginning, the Front Porch consisted of only two team members, Rusty Smith and Mackenzie Stagg, but we continued to grow over the following five years, adding Betsy Garcia and Christian Ayala. Earlier this academic year, the Front Porch staff almost doubled in size, with recent additions of Research Architects Laurel Holloway, Gregg Ussery, and Timothy Tamulonis. Let’s meet these newest team members!
Laurel Holloway
Laurel is an alumnus of Rural Studio, and of both Ophelia’s Home and Patriece’s Home, who spread her wings after graduation to work in Nova Scotia with Brian MacKay-Lyons through the Ghost Residency. Her research chops and a love of the Studio brought her back to us as a Research Architect.
Among her current portfolio, Laurel’s work includes a project with one of Front Porch partner’s Eastern Eight CDC, located in Johnson City, Tennessee. She is producing drawings and providing the partner technical assistance for a new version of Patriece’s Home, the student project she helped build as a 5th-year student. She’s also been working on the second generation of a duplex design first created for New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, mapping housing conditions in Selma as part of recovery work through a USDA grant, and developing technical resources that are extensible to a wider network of housing providers.
Gregg Ussery
Gregg joined the team from the Windy City, where he worked with our friends at Landon Bone Baker Architects (LBBA). His degrees, including his master’s in architecture, are from Clemson, and he comes with strong drawing skills (renderings and the like).
Gregg is providing technical assistance on a USDA-funded project to expand the City of Selma’s capacity to increase the inventory of high-performance homes, helping with tornado recovery efforts. Gregg is also working alongside the City and Front Porch team to research and document processes—such as how resources flow, how partners are involved, and how to leverage multiple partnerships toward shared project goals—for a long-term sustainable housing development program in Selma. Along with this community engagement, Gregg has been working on the drawing sets for partners in Tennessee and Arkansas and applying his skills to developing renderings for partners to share with community members, project sponsors, and municipalities.
Timothy Tamulonis
Tim comes to us from Syracuse University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design via studios in New York, Boston, and New Orleans. He, too, is an outstanding resource, with his interest in equitable architecture and the power of design to foster positive changes in communities.
Tim has been a great asset to Front Porch Initiative’s contributions to the BuildBetter with Whirlpool program. This partnership with Habitat for Humanity International helps track the efficacy of beyond-code energy-efficient and climate-resistant features in selected Habitat for Humanity homes. He is assisting with data collection, analyzing the data, and then illustrating the findings. He is also working on site planning projects with partners in Arkansas, Alabama, and Texas, as well as developing drawings for a new project with Chipola Area Habitat for Humanity in Marianna, Florida. Tim has also participated in a number of site visits where he has documented project progress and checked as-built conditions.
Mackenzie shares, “Laurel, Gregg, and Tim have been valuable additions to the team and have brought fresh energy and excitement to the team as well as bringing their own unique experiences and perspectives to the work. We were overwhelmed by the interest we received as we were looking to expand the Front Porch Initiative team, and we’re excited to work with the next generation of “housers” who are working on increasing equitable access to an affordability of housing for all.”
Rural Studio is excited to expand our outreach, increase our research, and better serve our partners with these new colleagues. Welcome to the Front Porch team, ya’ll!