Living Future unConference 2019

This session will explore new sustainable Indigenous housing in North America, bringing together three perspectives as necessary ingredients for activating meaningful change: the user group, sustainability specialists, and Indigenous designers. Our team includes two Indigenous architecture graduates/students who will share their views of existing reservation housing, what they see possible and or desirable in future tribal housing and their perspectives on the connections between sustainability, housing, and Indigenous worldview/ lifeways. A Cree architect and ASU professor of architecture and construction, specializing in Indigenous design and methodologies of practice, will share her ongoing research to be used as a case study for the session: Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) Sustainable Housing Initiative. Additionally, a collaborative architect and partner at coLAB studio, a Tempe-based firm who recently completed the first LBC Net-Zero home in Arizona, will discuss the integration of sustainable building practices while collaborating on the development of a sustainable prototype for GRIC.

Together, the team will utilize a lens of holistic design thinking to speak to the notion of abundance, both present and lacking within many Indigenous communities. The team will talk through the overlay of complementary systems in reservation living – cultural preservation, economic growth, social well-being, environmental quality and political autonomy – as a system that can be utilized beyond reservation borders. We will focus on the lived experience perspective (growing up on the reservation), alongside the perspectives of practitioners who together form the network of systems that can lead innovation in sustainable housing.

There are a number of questions to be examined in this session: how can practitioners, working together as a network of collaborators, act as champions for underserved communities? What are our limitations or challenges as practitioners? How can we act as champions and advocates for our tribal partners in order to bridge and build understandings between communities within and outside reservations? What can we learn from working closely with tribal partners in sustainable development? How do we work with local materials to build ecologically when climate change keeps moving the design parameters?

This session is approved for the following continuing education credits:

• 1.5 LFA credits
• 1.5 AIA LU|HSW credits

Spend time with our diverse panel of individuals sharing real-life knowledge and setting great examples right now; those walking the small talk, and loving it! Learn perspectives from pioneer Dee Williams, a gardener who created an abundant urban CSA template, a young Washington activist who is in the process of proposing a call to action to a US government agency, a kid’s film short on tiny living, new small footprint code changes and more. Our target audience: those willing to listen and focus on others’ needs. Goal: collaboration to foster small communities’ world-wide as mainstream options and increase housing diversity.

This session is approved for the following continuing education credits:

• 1.5 LFA credits
• 1.5 AIA LU|HSW credits

Houselessness is a growing public health crisis unfolding in our own backyards. While permanent housing is ideal, there is a widening gulf between available supply and the number of individuals in immediate need. Our communities must explore emergency intermediate solutions to bridge this growing divide. One potential path forward is the Village Model for transitional housing. Based upon the improvised and informal “villages” being established by the houseless themselves, this model works to replicate the success that these groups have found in creating vibrant, safe, supportive, and self-governing communities, but takes it a step further in terms of providing the physical and social infrastructure needed to ensure their continued success. Perhaps the best example of this model - the Kenton Women's Village - represents an entirely new step in the village evolution - a city-sponsored, fully supported, safe and sustainable village created through a participatory process. A critical part of that process was recognizing the fact that Design is an unmet need in most informal villages. We believe design can play a significant role in changing perceptions about homelessness among the general public and is essential for the success of any effort that hopes to integrate houseless individuals into the fabric of the community.

This presentation will look at the Village Model from a variety of perspectives and describe how a series of unlikely partnerships and collaborations has enabled the greater design community to work with our houseless neighbors in support of their journey off the street. First, there will be an overview of the P.O.D. (Partnership on Dwelling) Initiative – a short 6-week design build exercise that took place in late 2016 and which asked the architecture and design community to apply their skills and experience in shaping the built environment toward housing Portland’s most vulnerable population - the homeless. Beginning with an open design charrette that was attended by nearly 100 architects, social workers, activists, and houseless individuals, designers worked with the diverse group at their tables to come up with preliminary ideas for “pods,” categorized as small structures with a footprint of between 6’x8’ and 8’x12’, and as tall as 10’x8.’ Fourteen teams manifested their designs into built pods with financial support from the Portland Mayor's Office and The Larson Legacy, and these structures then became the initial infrastructure for the Kenton Women’s Village.

This session is approved for the following continuing education credits:

• 1.25 LFA credits
• 1.25 AIA LU|HSW credits

Description:  

Food plays an integral role in the health and well-being of our communities. Come hear two real-world examples of private-public collaborations utilizing community-driven local food production and Urban Agriculture Imperative scale jumping with a school district to increase equity, environmental outcomes, and youth education and job skills.

Arch|Nexus SAC:  Come explore inventive COLLABORATIVE urban agriculture strategies that create ABUNDANCE radiating beyond the LEED project boundary.  Fulfilling the Urban Agriculture Imperative is especially challenging on a constrained urban site where the new building or renovation must occupy most of the site area. Scale-jumping of urban agriculture presents many more benefits to both the project entity and the “receiving” organization than other scale-jumping measures like solar panel location.  This story will utilize a case study of Arch|Nexus SAC, the first Living Building that is an adaptive reuse of an existing urban building designed, owned, operated and occupied by Architectural Nexus, to focus on how the collaboration opportunity of scale-jumping urban agriculture creates opportunities for abundance for the project designer/owner, the partnering organization Sacramento City Unified School District, the larger community, and community policy advocacy.

King Conservation District: 
Communities know what is needed for them flourish. They understand the skillsets, social networks, and resources of their area. King Conservation District and the City of Seattle developed a partnership framework that encourages community-driven solutions with a focus on equity and environmental justice. Learn how the Rainier Beach Farm Stand, an inclusive, community-of-color-led farm stand, created through this model, is an instrument for powerful environmental, social, and economic change. Hear from representatives of KCD, and the youth that managed the Rainier Beach Farm Stand about equity, asset-based community development, and the experience of creating an inclusive community farm stand.


Learning Objectives:

• How to utilize an equity and environmental justice framework to implement asset-based community development
• How to develop youth job pathways and community-based local food system involvement
• How to develop an inclusive community space such as a farmers market/farm stand.
• Understand Urban Agriculture calculations, impacts of local Scale Jumping and the value the approach can have supporting a challenged site, whether reuse or new construction.
• Realize the community engagement and educational benefits the fulfillment of Urban Agriculture Imperative has had on the Arch|Nexus SAC site, the Sutter Middle School site and the direction of the Sacramento School District.

This session is approved for the following continuing education credits:

• 1.5 LFA credits
• 1.5 AIA LU|HSW credits

The International Living Future Institute’s JUST program is a voluntary disclosure program for all types and sizes of organizations. The JUST program provides an innovative transparency platform for organizations to reveal much about their operations, including how they treat their employees, where they make community investments and how they assess supply chain performance. The JUST Program gives organizations a framework to evaluate performance on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and practices. In a similar fashion to the Institute's Declare Program, the JUST Program acts as a “nutrition label” for socially just and equitable organizations.

This approach requires reporting on organizational policies and data on a range of social equity indicators across six major categories. Each of the indicator metrics asks for specific measurable accountabilities in order for the organization to be recognized at a Level 1, 2, 3 or 4 rating, which is then summarized elegantly on a JUST label. The JUST label can be used by an organization on their website and in marketing communications to show commitment and public transparency on these issues. The JUST label can be referenced in an organization's annual report, sustainability report or Corporate Social Responsibility report. The JUST 2.0 label has close alignment with metrics associated with the Global Reporting Initiative.

This session is approved for the following continuing education credits:

• 1.25 LFA credits
• 1.25 AIA LU credits

The Prairie View A&M University School of Architecture works in a Public Interest Design framework with the Independence Heights neighborhood in Houston, Texas. For the past four years, PVAMU teams have developed net zero, affordable infill housing solutions for the neighborhood through the Department of Energy’s Race to Zero Competition, winning the Grand Award in both 2018 and 2016.

Throughout the process, the Passive House Institute U.S. 2015 and 2018 certification standards have been tested for hot and humid climates. Students from the 2018 team will present their project, The Fly Flat, discussing the results of their research.

This session is approved for the following continuing education credits:

• 1.25 LFA credits
• 1.25 AIA LU|HSW credits