A Focus On What?

The manufacturing process for most building materials is opaque, toxic, and frequently violates human rights. While craft is often framed in mystical, phenomenological terms of individual experience, its primary expression is in the hidden labor that shapes everyday things. The role of material specificiers in all forms today is to understand the embodied energy and human effort embedded in what we create. In other words, to make ordinary things with extraordinary care.

There is a well documented housing affordability problem in the US, even in places with enough housing to go around. I am proud to have contributed to over a dozen supportive or affordable housing projects in my career so far. I also deeply believe that housing affordability is inextricably linked with the financialization of the housing market not just supply lagging demand. I aspire to be a part of shifting our housing stock from private to public ownership through commoning practices like social housing, co-ops, intentional communities, community land trusts, and more diverse public spaces. Access to adequate housing is a human right.

The planet is changing at an alarming rate, and the AEC industries cannot continue to minimize their impact. Faced with this existential crisis, it's our responsibility to practice what I broadly call regenerative building. It's a term, borrowed from the equally broad "regenerative agriculture." When I say it I mean maintenance, repair, building less, adaptive reuse, design for deconstruction, bioregional design, a circular construction economy, bio-based material use, equitable supply chain management, and environmental stewardship. Through The Last Straw and CASBA, I advocate for regenerative building practices, promoting care and sufficiency over authorship and opulence.