The Challenges and Opportunities of Creating Intentional Community-Involved Housing

Creating intentional community-involved housing is a complex task that requires careful consideration of various factors, including legal, technical, social, and economic aspects. The project's lead developer acknowledges that this is not an easy task, but rather an opportunity to design and build something new and innovative.

The challenge lies in the fact that creating such a system has never been done before, which means that it will require a significant amount of experimentation and testing. Additionally, the system needs to overlap with five different existing systems, each with its own unique characteristics, which adds to the complexity. However, this complexity also presents an opportunity for innovation and growth.

The project is being approached through the lens of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and iteration, with a focus on testing and refining the design. The use of test-driven development (TDD) and fabrication allows for rapid prototyping and iteration, which will help to identify and address any challenges that arise. This approach also enables the team to learn from each experience and continue to refine and improve the system.

The economic and social systems that support this project are also being designed from scratch, which is a significant challenge in itself. However, this allows for a blank slate, where new approaches and solutions can be developed. The use of open-source methodology will enable others to contribute to and build upon the design, which is expected to lead to improvements and innovations.

The goal of the project is to create a system that can support diverse forms of community involvement and participation. This includes housing options for individuals who cannot afford traditional housing, as well as opportunities for social and civic engagement. The project also aims to provide a platform for marginalized communities to participate in governance and decision-making.

One of the key features of this system is its modular design, which allows for easy expansion and customization. Each module can be designed with specific features and functionalities, allowing users to create a customized living space that meets their needs. This approach also enables the creation of different types of housing, such as shared or cooperative housing, which can cater to diverse community needs.

The project is being developed in collaboration with a number of stakeholders, including returning veterans, groups of folks interested in intentional community development, and affinity groups. These partners bring unique perspectives and expertise to the table, which will help to inform and shape the design. They also provide an opportunity for user testing and feedback, which will be essential in refining the system.

The potential impact of this project is significant, with the possibility of creating a new model for community development that can be replicated in other cities and countries. The use of open-source methodology and collaboration with diverse stakeholders makes it possible to tap into the collective intelligence of many individuals, which can lead to innovative solutions and improvements.

In conclusion, creating intentional community-involved housing is a complex task that requires careful consideration of various factors. However, this complexity also presents an opportunity for innovation and growth. Through the use of MVPs, iteration, and open-source methodology, the team aims to create a system that can support diverse forms of community involvement and participation. With the potential impact being significant, it will be exciting to see how this project unfolds over the next year or two.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou know the phrase when all you have is a hammer everything around you looks like a nail it's a clever way of saying that the tools we have at our disposal can fundamentally change the way we see the world for better and for worse I've seen a lot of maker spaces in my life and seeing a lot of amazing tools but the space we're visiting today is special in a unique way in that it has been designed from the ground up itself as a kind of tool whose primary focus is social impact insight focus is a place where people in their community can go and use available systems technologies and materials to develop products and systems that will fundamentally affect and improve the lives of themselves and their communities that sounds like a lot but they're starting with simple things like micro housing and open source table design let's check it out Blair talked to me about insight focus what what is this organization of what's going on website focus is a it's a multidisciplinary organization kind of legally it's a low-profit limited liability corporation the social benefit kind of l3c practically speaking it actually emerged out of trying to make education and Community Development kind of aligned in a way that benefit each other and so we've been in this location for about seven years and our emphasis is on being able to create things in the world that can meaningfully change people's lives and so we kind of built the making thanks part into two pieces we have the natural environment in the built environment so we have a permaculture or agro ecology program on the natural systems part we have a digital fabrication lab a Fab Lab on the built environment part they got a crossover a little bit well biomimicry and the ethical framework of managing supply chains that come out of permaculture that you can apply to the digital fabrication piece so kind of a balanced thinking way of approaching things and kind of the third leg of the stool is kind of enterprise so one of the social and economic systems that allow you to take those skillsets and not just utilize your time for someone else's benefit but actually create value and wealth in the community that's you're a part of to be able to turn some vicious cycles that a lot of people are involved in into virtuous cycles so that's kind of what we're about so it's a makerspace but with a really focused goal towards putting back into the community and helping those who are who are participating exactly do you have a standard I'm assuming a standard compliment of your of your basic makerspace tools yes we do then we also have some other different kinds of Mills and we're you know involved in the process of experimenting with how to make different machines given the machines that we have here so we're starting to work on that kind of Fab Lab 2.0 version where we're making the guts of being able to make our own machines custom to the purposes at hand so the machines can start making the machines yes and hopefully democratize access to it yeah if you have a lab in some place most of the stuff you make the equipment out of is commonly available right so it allows you to kind of multiply this quite a bit and also drive the cost down and also allow people again then the machines to make them using supply chains where they understand what communities or impacted upstream by gathering their materials may understand what communities again be impacted downstream by disposing of this stuff so it allows people to kind of operate in a way that's consistent with the way they want to view and live life so I visited a lot of maker spaces around the country in the last year and I've seen a lot of things that they make but we're standing in front of one of the larger projects I've seen come out of a makerspace and this is my favorite sign that I have seen on anything I almost want this to be a t-shirt but what what are we standing in front of okay so the sign is for two purposes one is we put this massive thing right in the middle of the the lab so it is actually an apology to people a relatively taking up this much space but it's actually a fairly important thing and so what we're standing in front of is our mock-up of the interior of a micro cabin so it's a eight by eight foot exterior it's designed to be completely functional in terms of sleeping space sanitation space a shower bathroom kitchen space etc with a design that can be essentially net zero energy in a Michigan climate Wow and to be able to have you know gray water systems and some rainwater collection but also composting toilets and alike in the mix and so you know it's important for us one is because a lot of people don't have access to housing but another piece is that there's a lot of affordable housing that's not affordable to continue to live in you know I've heard statistics that in many cities Detroit included more people lose the ability to live in their houses because they can't keep up with the utilities and and repair costs then because of anything else you're so getting into something cheap does not mean that you're on easy street in terms of continuing things so if somebody has an ability to put some sweat equity into building their own house that can have minimal ongoing demands you know the 50 to 70% of a low to moderate income person salary that goes into paying for rent utilities mortgage yeah translate that into time that's 50 to 70 percent of your time that you can get back yeah to do things like investing in yourself investing in your family investing in community dynamics etc being part of your neighborhood oh absolutely so you know the the key part of the project is to develop the smallest viable version of what we hope will be a series of opportunities for two people to participate in rebuilding their communities in ways that have different functional dynamics not just a different physical structure can we see it absolutely the grand unveil yeah so here's the yeah so this is the kind of interior prototype of the micro cabin and so the all of this was fabricated in the Fab Lab right all the cabinets were more designed that actually a showerhead was 3d printed oh and you know the shower components were were cut out and the curtains are here to allow people to spend time in the space and actually get the feel for what is for what it would be so the point of this is kind of the Minimum Viable Product for the interior to allow people to spend time tweak and adjust and so will come up with something that makes sense to really start propagating from there right so you know the best frame and everything is going to fabricate it so it's not just a housing solution this is actually the first of a set of housing solutions in a working prototype right and you guys are building every I'm curious because they don't actually see the toilet the toilet this would be kind of like in a boat the toilet the composting toilet will be in it'll be a wet bath okay in the shower Union to say space it'll be a seat in the shower at the same time as it sits the toilet unit and again very much like a head in a boat and you guys are building these things right on site with the tools you have here yes and we you know this will be on a trailer we have a another location in Midtown that actually has a loading dock and some other doors and alike which will be more the production oriented location and you know we'd be on the register as a RV manufacturer in the process so the people could actually finance and insure this once it's produced oh right allows you to have some more stability in your life rather than kind of living in something which is legal but doesn't necessarily allow you to tap into the risk management strategies that normal people kind of tap into right so the whole structure of this is designed to be compliant with building code also in terms of the way the frame will go together and so it's not necessary for an RV but if we scale from 64 square feet under 60 to 400 and put a 400 how the foundation the skills that people learn in building this will be definitely transferable into something that's code compliant and you can get a certificate occupancy for and you said sweat equity so your idea is that people living in these spaces will also be participating in constructing them absolutely and it may be directly constructing your own or it may be giving back and being part of the process to help other people build their houses as they helped you build yours as you upscale when the process of doing it how where are you within the within this within this project are people living in these yet or no where we expect to have one functionally being used as a seasonal residence in northern Michigan by the end of June Wow and that gives us kind of an opportunity to get some exposure with people in an area that's expected to be somewhat rustic you can work out the kinks right and then you know by the fall have enough iterations of kind of building a design where we're comfortable actually having them on the ground for people you know living in them and depending on that's exciting and terrifying right so am i right that we are going to construct some part of one of these spaces so we're yes so we're gonna start kind of transitioning from the its interior to the exterior okay and so part of the process for this is to not require a tremendous amount of skill trade and the process of putting this together and so the structure of this will be a framed wall you know top plate bottom plate studs with insulation on the interior well you guys are actually cutting exactly self-aligning oh wow right so this is this is being done on the router right so here's the top with a bottom plate so each of these tab into here right into the indents for the screws to go in and so it all suffer lines you don't need levels or tape measures or whatever to figure out where to do things that's amazing and so that eases the process obviously putting these together you know we're actually writing an app so if you specify the dimensions of this it'll compile all of this out and so you'll get the cut program for you know your your framing system Wow out of that so in the future you could almost put it what how much material you have and it'll tell you how much of space you could build that's true that's another way of going into it right and I mean ultimately what we like to do is to go in and specify the space planning and then actually have the cabinet's compiled out and whether the bed folds up or not and those kind of things I mean that's not iteration one but the iteration three and four the point is did we go in to be able to conceptually design your house and be able to compile it down to actually the cut pattern and the Bill of Materials for everything that goes into it including a sequence of construction tasks is all this open source is that the goal so you can show this and people can do this all over the world right and so yeah the point of this is to make it accessible you know some people will want to take the next level and so we can get kind of get you into not only how to code the apps but how to use the traditional CAD cam workflow to do it but that's kind of forbidding for somebody who's just kind of getting into it just wants to kind of get things done we have most of the pieces pre-cut because we figured you didn't want to stand around watching us cut out the whole framing system but I love the smell of sawdust I did leave one piece okay because so we can kind of get an idea of what the process is for cutting one of these so we might want to lock knock out the last and then we can go and actually start framing up the wall system from there let's do it okay all right so let's grab some wood right reasonably good no staples so yeah this is a basic fixturing that we put together to hold hold and align the 2x4 and the alignment is not super critical because we got a little bit extra to work with oh so it'll actually cut the end off right I see okay we get my hearing protecting on okay it's about right into zero point you the time he takes to prep astonished that's amazing just two passes all right okay all right our final stud for the mix okay sorry assembly gonna kind of follow this set up with the bottom the top and then the studs that are spaced in the slots and then we're gonna screw them in I don't like having nail guns in the lab if we're gonna be in production on this I probably would nail them as opposed to scrutinise sure what people find amazing ways to do crazy stuff with nail guns hi we're gonna stick with the you know structural screws I'm in the process of doing this you know ones that are not brittle but a better heat-treated do yeah yeah okay so we've got top and bottom plates that we cut so we're gonna go 7 feet this way and 8 feet this way so why don't we keep these aligned this okay and I think that'll give us a best amount of working room so we can leave that plate there and then let's keep our electrical channel down on this end or kind of line these up given the engineering type I am I love to do things the first time I hate to do things the second third and fourth time we're ready to move on to the next problem I always make the first prototype all right okay so what I'd love to do is to kind of demonstrate the first joint and then hand it off okay to kind of complete the process by all means so why don't we kind of do the first one or two and then we'll hand over the screw guns I think we have bits in both of these yeah better set up to work if you like that one that's fine if you all know the clutch on it that works out oh this is fine okay it'll drive it yep so I can start on this end and perhaps you start on that end okay and there are dimples kind of built-in oh look at that there's already a hole for the screw yep hopefully a smooth words as possible so awesome alright no t-squares no tape measurers know whatever follow the slots hit the holes and it'll be right that is alright so we actually might want to remove these from the middle because they're gonna start or at least lean them up a little bit so then that stopping the other ones from kind of coming together and sell all the tabs are set right so how do you do then so won't you put do all of the bottoms and then we'll kind of do the tops I see cuz I obviously put this one in that's gonna lock all the rest of them down so yeah these are cut pretty much to fit but if you need a little tap you can feel free to use a rubber mallet so let me brace this end if you want to tap that in the screws will pull pull them in also the rest of it the screws will pull in when you start kind of driving them so the only thing you kind of want to make sure is that you're not starting to screw off in too much of an angle so it exits the side of the 2x4 so if this were done with this is on 24 on center right so if this were done with two by sixes just to Kiko compliant as advanced cleaning since it's a very small structure doesn't have a huge amount of doesn't have a second-story doesn't have a huge amount of load Saturday at 16 and we're gonna have the sheeting that's continually applied to the whole piece oh great we really don't need it for our manufacturing but we have some two-by-sixes that are cut up there and again they usually exactly the same system your code compliant at that point so the technique is and that's what we want to make sure if you want to stand how to do it right in exactly the way that works and this is Shepherd also cutting out the panel so to spin it oh I mean only way you need to do that is when you have windows and details right right right yeah and so we didn't bother on this one get on the one that set up with the two-by-sixes pocket so in case you're not gonna build it on the floor stand it up but you're gonna toenail it you can directly go into the predefined pockets and make sure that you have your four nails at the right spacing which is also Co compliant so it doesn't allow you to make a mistake right that's really cool I just started using pockets in my shop and they've changed my life okay I love this so young at the turn upon that process you know you've done a lot of work obviously we shot bats and with housing and the like so we try to use as many lessons learn than that go down blind alley so we got a lot of help from different people in thinking about how to put the different systems together so I mean it's just starting to sink into me how complex this computer programming needs to be to make this this simple like you have windows and electrics and water placement of all these different things the cabinets and the bed and the program figures it all out and cuts all the pieces of wood to the exact specs with layers so there's no layer which is you know what you'll take a glance at here is just if this is a frame you want to do here's how the framing works and the next one kind of overlays infrastructure with that with then feeds into that then the next one kind of does your space planning the feeds into that that feeds into the other so as with everything you kind of build it yeah up by layer yeah I think it's that fast that's amazing yeah I don't play around which is the bottom this is the bottom that would be the bottom because this is the electrical channel would be about outlet height if we saw okay stand it up this way right so extend it yep so in this setting this will be either the front wall or the back wall all right and you probably notice that all of the mechanical infrastructure is not one wall in here so all of the plumbing all of the essential electrical and light gives in one place so we really have and we can do that in a prefab way and get a lot of the things set up so really when you're knocking it up outside the rest of it works these two walls will have doors and windows and alike so we'll do some additional framing and those but this is this will use for either the front wall or the back wall as we integrate this onto the trailer and go forward that's really cool and so will again insulate this with three and a half inches of insulation the nice thing about being 24 on center is that you you know each one of these is a pathway to conduct heat right no matter how much insulation you put in here each one of these is still conducting heat through so going out to 24 not only say is wait but it saves a lot of thermistor it's and it's enough that it's measurable difference in thermal conductivity right Wow and then in this format you're also putting continuous insulation on the outside so even those areas that you do have a thermal break you have another inch and a half on the outside which is cutting that down and that's what's keeping it cool in the summer and warm in the winter right and you get to the point where that extra investment in insulation and allows you to eliminate investment in heating the cooling systems they end up saving money spend a little bit more here and save more on the other end a lot gets back to that integrated design approach so you know mechanical systems we're going to be working on now the heat exchanger for the air transfer and some of those pieces to integrate you know we're fooling around with some bio digesters for some gas which may you may use for outside grilling or those kind of things and the area on the front that has a tone will have the batteries and that kind of thing the roof is pretty much a flat roof with a very small rounding and that's really there just to make sure if it flattens at all it never becomes concave right those are very very small but that allows us to have a lot of flexibility in the solar thermal and the photovoltaic systems that are on the roof because you don't have a pitch that you have to always align with in order to make it work you can go someplace set up and then adjust and tune things so we're in the in the process of cranking those together and over the next six weeks we should have all of those mechanical systems integrated into the first unit that our are very adventurous test subject will begin to live in and we'll work out the additional details and you said you have some acres right in the middle of Detroit where you're going to start testing some of these out right so to start out with we actually have a very specific demand in northern Michigan there's a place that we have a campground and we are doing some economic and social development up there also and that being a rustic setting on a beautiful Lake out of the woods people expect to spend most of their time outside not inside right so this is an excellent transition for that when we this will be a good training component I expect in the city of Detroit most feets will be living and not too 8 by 8 but 8 by 20 which is actually hopefully you can pop in in a year and we'll have a good 8 by 20 to kind of take a look at or I can send you some some photos that works and that's what will begin to populate some of the communities in the city of Detroit right and then moving up to 400 square feet from there and then continuing so we have the the ground work done I think we have the you know the the real estate assets we have a lot of community interest in different ways of life and we have some practical projects that people get engaged in again not just get involved in making but actually do things that then allow them to have a different life experience to be able to spend more time doing things which might include making other things so hopefully we're kick-starting a pretty virtuous cycle that we'll be able to have some real life-changing results when the people who are participating so I'm excited about the progress is being made and the next steps are the really exciting pieces where you know you do all of the final refinement you know I'm definitely gonna be spending time in one of these in the Andorian areas just to experience it and understand it from the ground and Andy gives me an opportunity to have something really small to tuck into some really nice areas yeah an accident spend time is short right so I mean yeah it's not just having to do it but just opportunity to be able to enjoy some really nice outdoor spaces with a minimum of our stuff necessary to have all your creature comforts at the same time yes what's the biggest hurdle biggest hurdle is we've never done it like this before and so folks are used to I mean the building code allows you to do things a lot of different ways but people are used to seeing things a very specific way and each time you have to go back and prove this is actually allowed and that's a high hurdle actually we have to pass so a lot of the difficulty is that you know it's not illegal but it's never been done before and if you're trying to overlap with five different systems and have everybody look at this differently at the same time that's pretty significant and we're in it for the long haul so this is obviously not going to be the perfect first iteration but it will be reasonable you know we're into you know Minimum Viable products and iteration and testing and test-driven design the tester of a fabrication they have the ability to make each one different you can learn from each experience and continue to refine and make it happen the same thing in economic and social systems and we understand we're getting into a massive system co.design project and I'm loving it because that's exactly what we need to be doing and we have the pieces to be able to engage in that again you know never mistake a clear vision for a short distance and so you know it's gonna take some work and it's going to take some people willing to take a chance and work with the process of code developing and code designing how a person wants to live what the technology does for that etc along the way so who's gonna be using this housing how are you finding other people to occupy so I think they're a couple different pathways one is some people have found out about it and just said I want and so we will probably have some graduating classes coming out of a registered apprenticeship program that we have the teachers these skills that will go into a worker cooperative which will be our our VI a certified our V manufacturer who can actually produce and sell products to those paying customers and just say I've been dying to have something like this so that's one Avenue another is you know those people who don't have and don't want the overhead associated with having to work this higher to support all this infrastructure associated with the place that I live because the place that I live isn't that important I mean taking for jobs to live in a house you don't spend any time in right yeah and you know carrying around a lot of dead space that I use once every two or three years and you know paying a lot of energy cost and light in ways that are inconsistent with you know the way that I'd like to live but there are also groups of folks that we're talking with I mean they're returning veterans who need an opportunity to reestablish social participation in some ways so if we could have an intentional community where they could participate in not just building and living in the housing but governing that community allows them to kind of get back into the swing of civic participation there's probably five different kind of birds of a feather affinity groups who are interested in establishing some collaborative way of living and if they can build their own manage their own maintain their own and if they don't have this huge cost of paying for outside infrastructure then they can spend their time working on figuring out how to change the world in the ways that they want to see it move so with the goal towards creating community involved housing and communities this could go far beyond anything that has been currently ideated and that's the expectation they could have it's I mean it could continue and have a totally different life than you expect absolutely I mean I know I believe that we have thought about a lot of things that are significantly important with us but I know that's 5% of what clever people will think about if they have some different set of tools and opportunities to work with but I'm really looking forward to seeing what that is and just giving out with this we're gonna get back a lot of what improvements are with this or what how this can be integrated with different ways or I you can work with zoning to make things happen yeah that whole open-source methodology you certainly get back as much or more than you put in and in this setting where there's some wickedly difficult problems it needs a lot of very creative people who have a different different types of intelligence is working on that and as it moves to other cities and other countries there will be other problems and other solutions and other avenues and pathways absolutely and each one of those also is the different lens into the same problem they're all working on you guys different part of it is exposed in different in different settings that's really really exciting so that's what's keeping up keeping us up at night here and that's what what the focus and energy is going into it's really worthwhile yeah but thank you so much for taking the time to show this amazing project let me get my hands a little dirty and I look forward to coming back and seeing one Institute excellent I appreciate the assistance this time through and you have an open invitation to watch this interesting problem and situation unfold over there over the next year or two I will take you up on that all right let's probably do ityou know the phrase when all you have is a hammer everything around you looks like a nail it's a clever way of saying that the tools we have at our disposal can fundamentally change the way we see the world for better and for worse I've seen a lot of maker spaces in my life and seeing a lot of amazing tools but the space we're visiting today is special in a unique way in that it has been designed from the ground up itself as a kind of tool whose primary focus is social impact insight focus is a place where people in their community can go and use available systems technologies and materials to develop products and systems that will fundamentally affect and improve the lives of themselves and their communities that sounds like a lot but they're starting with simple things like micro housing and open source table design let's check it out Blair talked to me about insight focus what what is this organization of what's going on website focus is a it's a multidisciplinary organization kind of legally it's a low-profit limited liability corporation the social benefit kind of l3c practically speaking it actually emerged out of trying to make education and Community Development kind of aligned in a way that benefit each other and so we've been in this location for about seven years and our emphasis is on being able to create things in the world that can meaningfully change people's lives and so we kind of built the making thanks part into two pieces we have the natural environment in the built environment so we have a permaculture or agro ecology program on the natural systems part we have a digital fabrication lab a Fab Lab on the built environment part they got a crossover a little bit well biomimicry and the ethical framework of managing supply chains that come out of permaculture that you can apply to the digital fabrication piece so kind of a balanced thinking way of approaching things and kind of the third leg of the stool is kind of enterprise so one of the social and economic systems that allow you to take those skillsets and not just utilize your time for someone else's benefit but actually create value and wealth in the community that's you're a part of to be able to turn some vicious cycles that a lot of people are involved in into virtuous cycles so that's kind of what we're about so it's a makerspace but with a really focused goal towards putting back into the community and helping those who are who are participating exactly do you have a standard I'm assuming a standard compliment of your of your basic makerspace tools yes we do then we also have some other different kinds of Mills and we're you know involved in the process of experimenting with how to make different machines given the machines that we have here so we're starting to work on that kind of Fab Lab 2.0 version where we're making the guts of being able to make our own machines custom to the purposes at hand so the machines can start making the machines yes and hopefully democratize access to it yeah if you have a lab in some place most of the stuff you make the equipment out of is commonly available right so it allows you to kind of multiply this quite a bit and also drive the cost down and also allow people again then the machines to make them using supply chains where they understand what communities or impacted upstream by gathering their materials may understand what communities again be impacted downstream by disposing of this stuff so it allows people to kind of operate in a way that's consistent with the way they want to view and live life so I visited a lot of maker spaces around the country in the last year and I've seen a lot of things that they make but we're standing in front of one of the larger projects I've seen come out of a makerspace and this is my favorite sign that I have seen on anything I almost want this to be a t-shirt but what what are we standing in front of okay so the sign is for two purposes one is we put this massive thing right in the middle of the the lab so it is actually an apology to people a relatively taking up this much space but it's actually a fairly important thing and so what we're standing in front of is our mock-up of the interior of a micro cabin so it's a eight by eight foot exterior it's designed to be completely functional in terms of sleeping space sanitation space a shower bathroom kitchen space etc with a design that can be essentially net zero energy in a Michigan climate Wow and to be able to have you know gray water systems and some rainwater collection but also composting toilets and alike in the mix and so you know it's important for us one is because a lot of people don't have access to housing but another piece is that there's a lot of affordable housing that's not affordable to continue to live in you know I've heard statistics that in many cities Detroit included more people lose the ability to live in their houses because they can't keep up with the utilities and and repair costs then because of anything else you're so getting into something cheap does not mean that you're on easy street in terms of continuing things so if somebody has an ability to put some sweat equity into building their own house that can have minimal ongoing demands you know the 50 to 70% of a low to moderate income person salary that goes into paying for rent utilities mortgage yeah translate that into time that's 50 to 70 percent of your time that you can get back yeah to do things like investing in yourself investing in your family investing in community dynamics etc being part of your neighborhood oh absolutely so you know the the key part of the project is to develop the smallest viable version of what we hope will be a series of opportunities for two people to participate in rebuilding their communities in ways that have different functional dynamics not just a different physical structure can we see it absolutely the grand unveil yeah so here's the yeah so this is the kind of interior prototype of the micro cabin and so the all of this was fabricated in the Fab Lab right all the cabinets were more designed that actually a showerhead was 3d printed oh and you know the shower components were were cut out and the curtains are here to allow people to spend time in the space and actually get the feel for what is for what it would be so the point of this is kind of the Minimum Viable Product for the interior to allow people to spend time tweak and adjust and so will come up with something that makes sense to really start propagating from there right so you know the best frame and everything is going to fabricate it so it's not just a housing solution this is actually the first of a set of housing solutions in a working prototype right and you guys are building every I'm curious because they don't actually see the toilet the toilet this would be kind of like in a boat the toilet the composting toilet will be in it'll be a wet bath okay in the shower Union to say space it'll be a seat in the shower at the same time as it sits the toilet unit and again very much like a head in a boat and you guys are building these things right on site with the tools you have here yes and we you know this will be on a trailer we have a another location in Midtown that actually has a loading dock and some other doors and alike which will be more the production oriented location and you know we'd be on the register as a RV manufacturer in the process so the people could actually finance and insure this once it's produced oh right allows you to have some more stability in your life rather than kind of living in something which is legal but doesn't necessarily allow you to tap into the risk management strategies that normal people kind of tap into right so the whole structure of this is designed to be compliant with building code also in terms of the way the frame will go together and so it's not necessary for an RV but if we scale from 64 square feet under 60 to 400 and put a 400 how the foundation the skills that people learn in building this will be definitely transferable into something that's code compliant and you can get a certificate occupancy for and you said sweat equity so your idea is that people living in these spaces will also be participating in constructing them absolutely and it may be directly constructing your own or it may be giving back and being part of the process to help other people build their houses as they helped you build yours as you upscale when the process of doing it how where are you within the within this within this project are people living in these yet or no where we expect to have one functionally being used as a seasonal residence in northern Michigan by the end of June Wow and that gives us kind of an opportunity to get some exposure with people in an area that's expected to be somewhat rustic you can work out the kinks right and then you know by the fall have enough iterations of kind of building a design where we're comfortable actually having them on the ground for people you know living in them and depending on that's exciting and terrifying right so am i right that we are going to construct some part of one of these spaces so we're yes so we're gonna start kind of transitioning from the its interior to the exterior okay and so part of the process for this is to not require a tremendous amount of skill trade and the process of putting this together and so the structure of this will be a framed wall you know top plate bottom plate studs with insulation on the interior well you guys are actually cutting exactly self-aligning oh wow right so this is this is being done on the router right so here's the top with a bottom plate so each of these tab into here right into the indents for the screws to go in and so it all suffer lines you don't need levels or tape measures or whatever to figure out where to do things that's amazing and so that eases the process obviously putting these together you know we're actually writing an app so if you specify the dimensions of this it'll compile all of this out and so you'll get the cut program for you know your your framing system Wow out of that so in the future you could almost put it what how much material you have and it'll tell you how much of space you could build that's true that's another way of going into it right and I mean ultimately what we like to do is to go in and specify the space planning and then actually have the cabinet's compiled out and whether the bed folds up or not and those kind of things I mean that's not iteration one but the iteration three and four the point is did we go in to be able to conceptually design your house and be able to compile it down to actually the cut pattern and the Bill of Materials for everything that goes into it including a sequence of construction tasks is all this open source is that the goal so you can show this and people can do this all over the world right and so yeah the point of this is to make it accessible you know some people will want to take the next level and so we can get kind of get you into not only how to code the apps but how to use the traditional CAD cam workflow to do it but that's kind of forbidding for somebody who's just kind of getting into it just wants to kind of get things done we have most of the pieces pre-cut because we figured you didn't want to stand around watching us cut out the whole framing system but I love the smell of sawdust I did leave one piece okay because so we can kind of get an idea of what the process is for cutting one of these so we might want to lock knock out the last and then we can go and actually start framing up the wall system from there let's do it okay all right so let's grab some wood right reasonably good no staples so yeah this is a basic fixturing that we put together to hold hold and align the 2x4 and the alignment is not super critical because we got a little bit extra to work with oh so it'll actually cut the end off right I see okay we get my hearing protecting on okay it's about right into zero point you the time he takes to prep astonished that's amazing just two passes all right okay all right our final stud for the mix okay sorry assembly gonna kind of follow this set up with the bottom the top and then the studs that are spaced in the slots and then we're gonna screw them in I don't like having nail guns in the lab if we're gonna be in production on this I probably would nail them as opposed to scrutinise sure what people find amazing ways to do crazy stuff with nail guns hi we're gonna stick with the you know structural screws I'm in the process of doing this you know ones that are not brittle but a better heat-treated do yeah yeah okay so we've got top and bottom plates that we cut so we're gonna go 7 feet this way and 8 feet this way so why don't we keep these aligned this okay and I think that'll give us a best amount of working room so we can leave that plate there and then let's keep our electrical channel down on this end or kind of line these up given the engineering type I am I love to do things the first time I hate to do things the second third and fourth time we're ready to move on to the next problem I always make the first prototype all right okay so what I'd love to do is to kind of demonstrate the first joint and then hand it off okay to kind of complete the process by all means so why don't we kind of do the first one or two and then we'll hand over the screw guns I think we have bits in both of these yeah better set up to work if you like that one that's fine if you all know the clutch on it that works out oh this is fine okay it'll drive it yep so I can start on this end and perhaps you start on that end okay and there are dimples kind of built-in oh look at that there's already a hole for the screw yep hopefully a smooth words as possible so awesome alright no t-squares no tape measurers know whatever follow the slots hit the holes and it'll be right that is alright so we actually might want to remove these from the middle because they're gonna start or at least lean them up a little bit so then that stopping the other ones from kind of coming together and sell all the tabs are set right so how do you do then so won't you put do all of the bottoms and then we'll kind of do the tops I see cuz I obviously put this one in that's gonna lock all the rest of them down so yeah these are cut pretty much to fit but if you need a little tap you can feel free to use a rubber mallet so let me brace this end if you want to tap that in the screws will pull pull them in also the rest of it the screws will pull in when you start kind of driving them so the only thing you kind of want to make sure is that you're not starting to screw off in too much of an angle so it exits the side of the 2x4 so if this were done with this is on 24 on center right so if this were done with two by sixes just to Kiko compliant as advanced cleaning since it's a very small structure doesn't have a huge amount of doesn't have a second-story doesn't have a huge amount of load Saturday at 16 and we're gonna have the sheeting that's continually applied to the whole piece oh great we really don't need it for our manufacturing but we have some two-by-sixes that are cut up there and again they usually exactly the same system your code compliant at that point so the technique is and that's what we want to make sure if you want to stand how to do it right in exactly the way that works and this is Shepherd also cutting out the panel so to spin it oh I mean only way you need to do that is when you have windows and details right right right yeah and so we didn't bother on this one get on the one that set up with the two-by-sixes pocket so in case you're not gonna build it on the floor stand it up but you're gonna toenail it you can directly go into the predefined pockets and make sure that you have your four nails at the right spacing which is also Co compliant so it doesn't allow you to make a mistake right that's really cool I just started using pockets in my shop and they've changed my life okay I love this so young at the turn upon that process you know you've done a lot of work obviously we shot bats and with housing and the like so we try to use as many lessons learn than that go down blind alley so we got a lot of help from different people in thinking about how to put the different systems together so I mean it's just starting to sink into me how complex this computer programming needs to be to make this this simple like you have windows and electrics and water placement of all these different things the cabinets and the bed and the program figures it all out and cuts all the pieces of wood to the exact specs with layers so there's no layer which is you know what you'll take a glance at here is just if this is a frame you want to do here's how the framing works and the next one kind of overlays infrastructure with that with then feeds into that then the next one kind of does your space planning the feeds into that that feeds into the other so as with everything you kind of build it yeah up by layer yeah I think it's that fast that's amazing yeah I don't play around which is the bottom this is the bottom that would be the bottom because this is the electrical channel would be about outlet height if we saw okay stand it up this way right so extend it yep so in this setting this will be either the front wall or the back wall all right and you probably notice that all of the mechanical infrastructure is not one wall in here so all of the plumbing all of the essential electrical and light gives in one place so we really have and we can do that in a prefab way and get a lot of the things set up so really when you're knocking it up outside the rest of it works these two walls will have doors and windows and alike so we'll do some additional framing and those but this is this will use for either the front wall or the back wall as we integrate this onto the trailer and go forward that's really cool and so will again insulate this with three and a half inches of insulation the nice thing about being 24 on center is that you you know each one of these is a pathway to conduct heat right no matter how much insulation you put in here each one of these is still conducting heat through so going out to 24 not only say is wait but it saves a lot of thermistor it's and it's enough that it's measurable difference in thermal conductivity right Wow and then in this format you're also putting continuous insulation on the outside so even those areas that you do have a thermal break you have another inch and a half on the outside which is cutting that down and that's what's keeping it cool in the summer and warm in the winter right and you get to the point where that extra investment in insulation and allows you to eliminate investment in heating the cooling systems they end up saving money spend a little bit more here and save more on the other end a lot gets back to that integrated design approach so you know mechanical systems we're going to be working on now the heat exchanger for the air transfer and some of those pieces to integrate you know we're fooling around with some bio digesters for some gas which may you may use for outside grilling or those kind of things and the area on the front that has a tone will have the batteries and that kind of thing the roof is pretty much a flat roof with a very small rounding and that's really there just to make sure if it flattens at all it never becomes concave right those are very very small but that allows us to have a lot of flexibility in the solar thermal and the photovoltaic systems that are on the roof because you don't have a pitch that you have to always align with in order to make it work you can go someplace set up and then adjust and tune things so we're in the in the process of cranking those together and over the next six weeks we should have all of those mechanical systems integrated into the first unit that our are very adventurous test subject will begin to live in and we'll work out the additional details and you said you have some acres right in the middle of Detroit where you're going to start testing some of these out right so to start out with we actually have a very specific demand in northern Michigan there's a place that we have a campground and we are doing some economic and social development up there also and that being a rustic setting on a beautiful Lake out of the woods people expect to spend most of their time outside not inside right so this is an excellent transition for that when we this will be a good training component I expect in the city of Detroit most feets will be living and not too 8 by 8 but 8 by 20 which is actually hopefully you can pop in in a year and we'll have a good 8 by 20 to kind of take a look at or I can send you some some photos that works and that's what will begin to populate some of the communities in the city of Detroit right and then moving up to 400 square feet from there and then continuing so we have the the ground work done I think we have the you know the the real estate assets we have a lot of community interest in different ways of life and we have some practical projects that people get engaged in again not just get involved in making but actually do things that then allow them to have a different life experience to be able to spend more time doing things which might include making other things so hopefully we're kick-starting a pretty virtuous cycle that we'll be able to have some real life-changing results when the people who are participating so I'm excited about the progress is being made and the next steps are the really exciting pieces where you know you do all of the final refinement you know I'm definitely gonna be spending time in one of these in the Andorian areas just to experience it and understand it from the ground and Andy gives me an opportunity to have something really small to tuck into some really nice areas yeah an accident spend time is short right so I mean yeah it's not just having to do it but just opportunity to be able to enjoy some really nice outdoor spaces with a minimum of our stuff necessary to have all your creature comforts at the same time yes what's the biggest hurdle biggest hurdle is we've never done it like this before and so folks are used to I mean the building code allows you to do things a lot of different ways but people are used to seeing things a very specific way and each time you have to go back and prove this is actually allowed and that's a high hurdle actually we have to pass so a lot of the difficulty is that you know it's not illegal but it's never been done before and if you're trying to overlap with five different systems and have everybody look at this differently at the same time that's pretty significant and we're in it for the long haul so this is obviously not going to be the perfect first iteration but it will be reasonable you know we're into you know Minimum Viable products and iteration and testing and test-driven design the tester of a fabrication they have the ability to make each one different you can learn from each experience and continue to refine and make it happen the same thing in economic and social systems and we understand we're getting into a massive system co.design project and I'm loving it because that's exactly what we need to be doing and we have the pieces to be able to engage in that again you know never mistake a clear vision for a short distance and so you know it's gonna take some work and it's going to take some people willing to take a chance and work with the process of code developing and code designing how a person wants to live what the technology does for that etc along the way so who's gonna be using this housing how are you finding other people to occupy so I think they're a couple different pathways one is some people have found out about it and just said I want and so we will probably have some graduating classes coming out of a registered apprenticeship program that we have the teachers these skills that will go into a worker cooperative which will be our our VI a certified our V manufacturer who can actually produce and sell products to those paying customers and just say I've been dying to have something like this so that's one Avenue another is you know those people who don't have and don't want the overhead associated with having to work this higher to support all this infrastructure associated with the place that I live because the place that I live isn't that important I mean taking for jobs to live in a house you don't spend any time in right yeah and you know carrying around a lot of dead space that I use once every two or three years and you know paying a lot of energy cost and light in ways that are inconsistent with you know the way that I'd like to live but there are also groups of folks that we're talking with I mean they're returning veterans who need an opportunity to reestablish social participation in some ways so if we could have an intentional community where they could participate in not just building and living in the housing but governing that community allows them to kind of get back into the swing of civic participation there's probably five different kind of birds of a feather affinity groups who are interested in establishing some collaborative way of living and if they can build their own manage their own maintain their own and if they don't have this huge cost of paying for outside infrastructure then they can spend their time working on figuring out how to change the world in the ways that they want to see it move so with the goal towards creating community involved housing and communities this could go far beyond anything that has been currently ideated and that's the expectation they could have it's I mean it could continue and have a totally different life than you expect absolutely I mean I know I believe that we have thought about a lot of things that are significantly important with us but I know that's 5% of what clever people will think about if they have some different set of tools and opportunities to work with but I'm really looking forward to seeing what that is and just giving out with this we're gonna get back a lot of what improvements are with this or what how this can be integrated with different ways or I you can work with zoning to make things happen yeah that whole open-source methodology you certainly get back as much or more than you put in and in this setting where there's some wickedly difficult problems it needs a lot of very creative people who have a different different types of intelligence is working on that and as it moves to other cities and other countries there will be other problems and other solutions and other avenues and pathways absolutely and each one of those also is the different lens into the same problem they're all working on you guys different part of it is exposed in different in different settings that's really really exciting so that's what's keeping up keeping us up at night here and that's what what the focus and energy is going into it's really worthwhile yeah but thank you so much for taking the time to show this amazing project let me get my hands a little dirty and I look forward to coming back and seeing one Institute excellent I appreciate the assistance this time through and you have an open invitation to watch this interesting problem and situation unfold over there over the next year or two I will take you up on that all right let's probably do it\n"