we've been framed

At long last the tedious and complicated task of framing the core, with its many staggered walls, rough openings and detailed nailing surfaces is coming to an end!





Hopefully the subs can come do their work (electric, plumbing, HVAC) ASAP because we've reached the point where we can't do anything else until their work is done and we get our open-walls inspection over with. The final piece of wood framing was the counter top. For the first time there is some spacial understanding of what the bathroom will be like.





As for the big build, we are still working on our engineers and the City of New Orleans. The most difficult part of this project is depending on someone else. It's hard to trust others to care about the project as much as you and to do their best and understand where you come from why you need them to do things quickly. Some people pull through for us, and some people don't. Getting things done in New Orleans is about fighting your way through people, who for whatever reasons, are not interested in helping a situation unless they directly benefit.

Hopefully we can make the term "community build" become more of a common concept around here.

beginning the core

We are in the first stages of building the core...so far we're fairly on schedule. We have Mark and Scott (Americorps) helping us 3 days a week, and the other days we spend planning each construction day, having meetings, and other miscellaneous things. We're keeping our fingers crossed to have the engineers signed off this week. Having the volunteers help us only 3 days a week has turned out to be helpful.



The warehouse space is really amazing - it has some sculptural elements and great graffiti, making for an interesting environment to build our core. There is a crew of people in there who make biodiesel (New Orleans Biofuel Initiative: http://www.nobifuel.com/) - the whole character of the place is based upon environmental consciousness. With our recent decision to include solar panels on Earl's house (thanks to NOLA SOLAR), we're fitting right in. I've included some photos of the warehouse space and the core progress below. For a more formal report, as always, visit the website.

introduction

ddbNOLA, Digital Design Build New Orleans, Lousiana, is a team that began as a Clemson University architecture studio researching and designing the Dry-In House. The end product of that studio was a mockup of a corner of the house built on Clemson's campus. Since then, the studio has moved on to New Orleans. The team consists primarily of two faculty members - Doug Hecker and Martha Skinner, two Clemson Architecture alumni now living in New Orleans - Jackson Blalock and Melissa Vandiver, and two team members still in South Carolina - Vincent Vimbaco and Mandi Young. To learn more about the Dry-In House, visit our website.



The ddbNOLA team is in New Orleans to build the first ever Dry-In House for the Rev. Earl Williams, a community leader in the hurricane-devastated neighborhood of Hollygrove. The Dry-In House seeks to address the problems that face many residents of post-Katrina New Orleans, including that of the FEMA trailer, which is a temporary and expensive solution to a long-term and expensive problem. We seek to provide affordable yet customizable housing through the use of digital fabrication technology. We seek to minimize the amount of skilled labor required to build a house and to bring the community together through the process of rebuilding itself. We also seek to bring high design to Hollygrove as a solution to a problem, rather than a luxury reserved for the wealthy.

There are three main systems that make up the Dry-In House: the core, the superstructure, and the skin. The core is a prefabricated bathroom and partial-kitchen unit, which houses the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems as well as the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. It is built off site and installed onto a foundation, after which the of prefabricated wood trusses is raised around it. On top of the superstructure a skin of prefabricated structurally insulated panels (SIPs) is installed and the house is dried in. After this process, the owner can move in and customize his finishes and other details as time and money permit.




Construction has just begun on the core in a warehouse near Hollygrove. There will be a post showing the status of that soon.