Re: Design Process: Call for experiences
From: Stephen Hawthorne (hawthornacpub.duke.edu)
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 94 14:20 CST
Blue Heron Farm talked with a wonderful local architect who is very 
committed to ecologically sound development, one of the cornerstones of 
our project.  She did up a proposal for phase one which came out way 
higher than we could really afford, so we're proceeding down another road:
buying houses that have to be moved for whatever reason and retrofitting 
them for passive solar, airtightness, etc.

While we are up to our eyebrows in development and construction details, 
it really is a lot of fun and it is doing what Roger Diggle referred to: 
connecting us closely as a group and to our land.

We are talking to the Design School at NC State Univ about having their
students do a studio, where they work on a live project out in the world.
Hopefully they will give us a hand with site planning and perhaps with 
plans for the common house.  We were afraid to put off the common house
due to costs because it seems like such a crucial element to the process
of community.  Right now we're looking at an old white clapboard Baptist
church as a possible community house.

I guess you could call our development and design process "learn as you 
go and as you sit and wait".  But I did get a call this morning from the 
contractor whose going to dig and pour the first footings, and he says 
it's definite for next week.  Now to get a hold of the mason who wandered 
off somewhere shortly after the houses were rolled into the southern 
field, 5 weeks behind their promised delivery date, and then to find the 
housemover to push them over the footings so the mason can lay the block, 
and the electrician just won't return our calls this week.....

Stephen Hawthorne
Blue Heron Farm
Chatham County, NC

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.