durable

What do we know?

As part of our ongoing research to better understand the barriers to equitable housing access in our community, Rural Studio students have designed and built numerous affordable prototype houses over the years.

We’ve been working iteratively to develop dozens of prototypes on the ground in Hale County. The following are just a few of the critical lessons that we have learned along the way.

First and foremost, it is essential that a house be designed to be durable, buildable, weatherproof, and secure.

But as important as these basic criteria are, they are just the minimum of requirements. We have also found it to be equally important that a house should be designed to be aspirational as well.

1) A house should directly express a sense of presence and dignity for the homeowner.

Dave's Home with title Presence

2) A house should intentionally foster a sense of community and engagement in its design.

3) A house should actively contribute to the health and wellbeing of those that live in the homes, as well as for those that build the homes.

4) A house should provide opportunities to both age in place with dignity, as well as shelter in place in safety.

And finally, even though our houses are intended for local people, and built with local materials, and with local labor and know-how, above all else,

5) A house must be well crafted.

But knowing these essential criteria is not enough. It is what we do once we know them that matters most. However, the gulf between knowing effective strategies and implementing them is enormous. In medical research, this is often referred to as the “Know-Do Gap,” and we have found it to similarly exist in architectural research as well. In our next post we will outline some of the implementation strategies and communication products that the Front Porch team has developed to begin to narrow this gap between what we know, and what we do.

Welcome to the Front Porch Initiative Blog!

The Habitat product line house
Image by Matt Hall

The Front Porch Initiative seeks to expand the reach and impact of the ongoing research, design, and construction work at Rural Studio. Capitalizing on over 25 years of work in West Alabama, our goal is to use the deep knowledge of quality home building developed by students in Hale County to promote quality home ownership in other underresourced rural areas.

Over the last 15 years of focused research and development on rural housing, student teams have continually built on the previous work of their peers, with an increasing focus on how each home is designed for both construction affordability and optimized performance. The result is a line of homes that are designed to be durable, efficient, resilient, and healthy. The Initiative aims to offer quality housing products in communities across the South and Appalachia (climatic regions most amenable to the 20K Home design) as well as offer our knowledge and technical assistance to housing providers more broadly.

“Good housing is a fundamental human right. It improves health, economies, and communities. Our goal is to provide access to beautiful, dignified, equity-building homes for our rural communities.”

– Andrew Freear, Rural Studio Director

The Initiative is collaborating with a range of government, NGO, and industry partners to tackle the issue of the lack of housing that is affordable, both through the construction of high-performance homes and by lowering the financial barriers to home ownership, including mortgage requirements, insurance costs, zoning, and permitting challenges.

The Initiative currently has a variety of projects and collaborations underway across the Southeast, and we look forward to regularly sharing more details about our partners and continued progress over the coming weeks, months, and years. Stay tuned here to follow along!

Learn more about the Front Porch Initiative here.