IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 20)
Photo: scot Zimmerman
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LOOK
Completed in 2012, the ADA-compliant Little Water House features passive climate control techniques and a cob heating stove to ensure comfort year-round.
By ian P. Murphy
20
spring//2013
Founded in 2000 by architect and University of
Utah Professor Hank Louis, DesignBuildBLUFF
(DBB) in Bluff, Utah, offers architecture students
an unforgettable design-build education while supplying new homes to the Navajo Nation, where
conditions are often substandard. Students participating in the semester-long project work with a
client family and advisers to define project demands
and limitations, planning and directing all phases
themselves. Most enter the program with no construction experience, only to emerge five months
later as seasoned practitioners of alternative building methods after using nontraditional materials
and collaborative strategies to create sustainable
spaces on a budget of less than $30,000.
Among the more than 15 projects completed
to date, the 1,000-square-foot Whitehorse House
stands four feet off the ground to take advantage of
desert breezes for cooling. The Little Water House
is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities
Act and includes five different passive heating and
cooling techniques for all-season comfort off the
grid. And the stunning new Nakai House, unveiled
this spring, features a central fireplace as a nod to
tribal tradition, a charred-cedar exterior and 50
linear feet of floor-to-ceiling shelves that display
poet, farmer and entomologist Lorraine Nakai’s
extensive collection of books.
Now running year-round, DesignBuildBLUFF
produces at least two new homes every year, creating better living environments for the Navajo
while spawning a generation of design-build professionals who will go on to benefit communities
throughout the world.
the quarterly publication of the design-build institute of america
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IQ Spring 2013
IQ Spring 2013
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page Cover1)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page Cover2)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 1)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 2)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 3)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 4)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 5)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 6)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 7)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 8)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 9)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 10)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 11)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 12)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 13)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 14)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 15)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 16)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 17)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 18)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 19)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page 20)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page Cover3)
IQ Spring 2013 - (Page Cover4)
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