January 26th
Leveling grade: frickin’ freezing out, and nothing to do but load scaffolding onto a truck, then get out the shovels and level the grade (little stones) in each unit, which at that point in time consisted of a concrete foundation. That’s it, that’s all.
My own interest in building first began when I began working for RONA, it was a summer job, (three-summer job, actually) in one of the smallest RONA stores in Toronto, converted to RONA from Lansing build-all the first year I worked there. It was situated in a house owned by Mr. Kitchen, a gentleman who owned a fair bit of land in that area of Willowdale for quite some time. Elements of its history remain, as the storage area behind the building looks remarkably like a barn, on the inside and out. Where I lost out on that job was that I did not take the initiative to create a system to manage inventory on a store-wide scale. My unyielding attention to my education also hindered that focus on hardware. Oh well.
On to the next chapter, I have begun to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, where I have basked in the opportunity to experience first hand many elements of building a house on-site. These experiences range from installing sub-flooring in washrooms, to creating bulkheads for washrooms, installing stair landings (yeah pneumatic nailers!), framing windows, and, inevitably, painting.
These experiences, as well as my interaction with a few architects through university, has sparked my interest in architecture, ranging from spec drawings, to framing, to painting and tile installation, and it’s interesting to be a part of building houses from different angles, and to continue to learn about architecture.
WIRED has begun to take an interest in architecture of late. Beginning in January 2006, it began to feature a section based on architecture, and in this issue, they introduce Prefab housing. This was begun decades ago, but Michelle Kaufman, a 37 year-old architect from San Francisco started to take it in a new direction less than a decade ago. Prefab housing refers to houses built on the assembly line and transported on-site to be assembled into their finished state. One of these houses, custom made, costs about of $200 a square foot, which is less expensive then the $3-400 per square foot you would pay for some homes in LA. They are also more energy efficient, and do in fact adhere to all building codes, perhaps even exceed them, as the sections need to survive the trip to the site, already fully produced.
What is now being transformed into custom made housing for the elite has roots that go back decades. One of its predecessors consisted of housing units that were brought along the railways and set up as temporary homes for miners and other workers in the heart of nature in the Rockies, where the only way to house the workers was to bring the homes in on the train. Some of these “communities” still stand, and can be seen along the Sea to Sky Highway on the way to Whistler from Vancouver. In their first article on the topic, WIRED cites that as early as “1906, the Aladdin Company was dropping factory-made Readi-Cut house kits in the US mail.”
Kaufman took this housing in a more elite direction when she built the first “Glidehouse” for herself in 2002, which would give her the green features and “modern aesthetic” that the million dollar mansions lacked. She approached Britco, a company who already manufactured these units en masse to ship to housing developments, and proposed the first custom made house to them. They accepted the challenge of creating this style of housing for the elite; clients who can afford, and actually request, these houses to be built for them. They are beginning to appear along the West Coast from California up to Canada, and in various other states. Prefab housing in its traditional assembly line style is also used, like Britco’s current project, as temporary housing units set-up for oil riggers in the tar sands region of Alberta, or other communities that attract workers to temporarily live long enough to complete their jobs. They are also more ecological in their production process; pieces can be ordered in bulk, and excess material from one unit is simply taken off the line of one second, and put back on when it comes to the next piece.
If this type of housing is so much easier to build why has this always been the lowest end solution? Why have our communities been filled with brick and mortar homes, when better, more sustainable “point and click” solutions also existed? In the late 1940s, there were already over 200,000 in the US alone, so states WIRED. One dead weight in the industry seems to be the negative connotation of prefab housing. This type of housing has traditionally been used in poor areas and trailer parks, and built using what Kaufman calls “substandard code”. Even stronger than that is the stigma that this housing faces from those in the position of building the homes. Some municipal governments zone against it, and many contractors hold their trades in very high regard, and feel it would be insulting to leave behind their trades to work on a factory line. That would be one element of traditional housing I thoroughly agree with. If the US had embraced this kind of housing a century ago, those people would not exist today. They would be of a completely different mindset, and may still have found their niche in construction, but just from a slightly different angle. If the government had endorsed prefab much earlier, we may be advanced enough be now to create prefab buildings and condos, as well.
Architects, Bauhaus founders, and professors alike have all endorsed this method of housing, including Walter Gropius, who would have no doubt pushed it as a functional, practical design solution, pared down to the very basics. Frank Gehry was Kaufman’s inspiration for her work, as she trained with Gehry for half a decade before beginning to emphasize quality and “designability” of this kind of housing. Avi Friedman, an architecture professor at McGill, has also spotted this trend, and is promoting it with positive predictions for future use in the housing industry. Kaufman promotes this style of housing to the elite as giving the owner the ability to customize their house piece-by-piece, an empowering alternative to the choice of “would you like a chrome, maple, or marble kitchen with that? And what kind of molding?
Prefab housing is beginning to look better and better. About 5-10% of future housing in the US will be built using this style of construction, and about 10% of that market will be of the custom-made elite style. The early tides of devotees are now opening up to a larger audience, interested in the green features and economics of this type of housing as much as anything else. From their style and customization, to their financial and environmental costs, Prefab housing looks like the perfect designer model for building homes in the future.
For more details on this type of housing, visit www.Fabprefab.com.
Don't believe the devil
I don't believe his book
But the truth is not the same
Without the lies he made up
Don't believe in excess
Success is to give
Don't believe in riches
But you should see where I live
I...I believe in love
Don't believe in forced entry
Don't believe in rape
But every time she passes by
Wild thoughts escape
I don't believe in death row
Skid row or the gangs
Don't believe in the Uzi
It just went off in my hand
I...I believe in love
Don't believe in cocaine
Got a speed-ball in my head
I could cut and crack you open
Do you hear what I said
Don't believe them when they tell me
There ain't no cure
The rich stay healthy
The sick stay poor
I...I believe in love
Don't believe in Goldman
His type like a curse
Instant karma's going to get him
If I don't get him first
Don't believe in rock 'n' roll
Can really change the world
As it spins in revolution
It spirals and turns
I...I believe in love
Don't believe in the 60's
The golden age of pop
You glorify the past
When the future dries up
Heard a singer on the radio late last night
He says he's gonna kick the darkness
'til it bleeds daylight
I...I believe in love
I feel like I'm falling
Like I'm spinning on a wheel
It always stops beside of me
With a presence I can feel
I...I believe in love
Let me talk to you for a little while about Nelly Furtado’s world. In the world she lives in, promiscuity is empowering. To her, that word means “she’s not faithful to one musical style”. She should tell that to her child out of wedlock; Nevis. Only some people think that promiscuous refers to “the practice of making relatively casual and indiscriminate choices. The term is most commonly applied to sexual behavior, where it refers to a person who does not limit their sex life to the cultural norm, typically one partner, or to the framework of a long term monogamous sexual relationship”. Seeing as that was defined by the masses, and the masses have had the opportunity to refine that definition to perfection, using the web standard of wikipedia, I think it’s safe to say that Nelly was a bit confused when she thought promiscuity refered to music.
To the teenage girls in her audience though, it might just mean “being cool”. See how many different definitions there are? The entire article in the January issue of Reader’s Digest proves Nelly’s stupidity, and the stupidity of the culture that supports her. Nelly says that “As we grow older, we become more confident in our womanhood”. Well, who is ‘we’, to begin with, and how does she define ‘confidence’? I’m sorry, I think I might be being a bit picky, but confidence does not equate promiscuity. I know many women who are confident, and none of them would define themselves that way. Does Nelly think those two words are interchangeable?
Nelly continues throughout this article to spell it out – she’s bought into “sex sells”, plain and simple. I feel sorry for her, her view of the world, and her child. “Since I’ve had a baby, I love my body, I love my curves … the worst thing you can do is not love yourself. And I do now—I think that happens when you have a child”. Here I would hesitate again. Does that mean that women (and even men) can only love themselves when they have a child? What about the poor people who choose not to have children? Does that mean that going multi-platinum and publicly professing your relatively casual choices has nothing to do with loving yourself? That’s good to know! Does that also mean that your partner has learned to love himself, because now he has a child? What about – to throw in a non-sequitor – all those women in China who threw out their female children with the trash? Wow, that’s a lot of self-loving people out there!
I think I have learned through this article what newly converted sell-outs say to justify their choices. It’s an insight into how the mind tries to cope with what they’re doing in this pop-capitalist culture of ours. They will turn their worlds inside out, and say that they have found themselves and are a better, self-loving person now because of it. Are they really?
It seems as though many women in pop media go through this stage at some time or another. Sometimes I guess I could feel sorry for them; the pressure they are under must be intense. Just looking at the evidence; “promiscuous” women, from the sex kitten of the 20’s, to the slut of the 2000’s, portrayed as ‘art’ is enough to break the weak-minded, and so, she breaks. She’s endured the wringer of photoshoots, prescribed beauty and self-love, and a guided tour along the narrow path to lipstick and attention. She was never provided with the Necessary Dreams girls need to thrive in this world. No wonder she finds it easier to just go this way after she’s lived such a hard life.
At one point in the article, Nelly mentions that THE downside of being an artist is that “you get intrigued by many people, it keeps you moving” as the explanation for leaving her partner of four years. I’m not sure about that one, either. She forgot to mention other downsides of being an artist, although not as common as the one she just sighted: does she know about the painter who cut off his ear? Or the singers who have overdosed on drugs to their own deaths? Suddenly her “celebrity common” reason of leaving her partner, and the freedom her child has bought her seem like good alternatives to self-love after all. I’m glad she can love herself. After some people do “promiscuous” things (like write a multi-platinum record, changing from light music to hip-hop) they find they have fallen from grace, and are ashamed. But her experiences have allowed her to rise to new heights, and become a moral person. I pity where she was before.
But I apologize, this shouldn’t be about Nelly; this should be about the standards of society that led such things to happen on a daily basis. I think people need to choose, on a much more regular basis, the standards of learning, advocacy, personal challenges, self-discipline, etiquette, will(& won’t) power, and a social conscience over selling out and selling sex.
I do, however, agree with one of the closing lines of this article, where Nelly states that “I’ve always followed my instincts, and now I’m waiting for lightning to strike because I’m so happy!”
Aren’t we all.
