Op 2 "Building with community"

Personal: involve myself in projects that make me feel satisfied. Gain self gratification as a result of hard work and perservierence. Gain happiness as a result of working with my community and adding to it's resiliency.

Professional: Contribute great assets to my professional portfolio. Possibly make professional based connections for future community projects. Learn from my mistakes. 

          Output 2: “Building with the community”. This output will be held from the 8^th of January until the 22^nd of February.

          For this output I wanted to figure out how I could do the kinds of things I really enjoy doing and how I tie them into educational opportunities. For my first project I was commissioned to build a deck made from recycled building materials. It is extremely difficult to build anything of substantial size completely out of recycled materials, so I will be using very little new materials, certainly most of the lumber will be recycled, as for the hardware, this will be bought new. The construction of this project has the intention of both initiating myself into the world of recycling building materials, which I hope to do for many years to come, and showing others that building with recycled materials is possible. The project is intended to show those that see it that building something doesn’t have to come from new materials, and recycling is both economical and good for everyone.

For my next project I will be building something that I have envisioned for a while now. The project will be focused on building a prototype garden tool shed that stacks many functions. It too will be made predominantly from recycled building materials. The floor plan is simple, the dimensions are 4’x8’ and it is equally bisected creating two distinct rooms; one for tool storage for the garden, and the other will be equipped with shelving, tables and racks to provide for the needs of food curing, storing and processing. It will take advantage of a passive solar functionality that includes transparent corrugated plexy glass paneling on the roof. This functionality eliminates the need for electricity to light the tool shed and to heat the processing room. In addition to all of these stacked functions, the need to save and store harvested rain water will be addressed. The roof will be designed so that it can catch and store water for summertime or other low precipitation periods.

          This building will be a prototype that I may then use to market to those wanting similar buildings in their gardens. It is a building that is highly customizable and does not necessarily need to carry the same functions in the garden. I will also use it as a demonstration project for those looking to stack functions at their homes and to become aware of sustainable design.

          The third project will be a preliminary design of a rainwater catchment system that will be built in a high altitude permaculture demonstration site. This design will take advantage of rainwater catchment, irrigation and solar power generation to power pumps necessary to get the water from the tank to raised beds in the garden area.

           These projects all have the greater communities in mind so that I can investigate how I can influence society using the built world as my conduit. In all of these projects and all of my projects for the rest of the year I will try to involve as many people as I can to pass on the skills I use, to further both my own knowledge and the confidence and knowledge of others. This approach will give my year a more communal, collective and collaborative theme.