John Connell
John is Yestermorrow’s founder and most active dilettante. Though currently sitting on the Board of Directors, CORE and Curriculum Committees, his main passion has always been teaching. Architect (2Morrow Studio) and Urbanist (Mashpee Commons LP), he is currently focused on green, PREFAB housing strategies to promote affordable residential architecture and robust pedestrian neighborhoods. An author (Homing Instinct, Creating the Inspired House, Design Outlaws) and frustrated animator, he has co-founded or launched the Congress on Residential Architecture (CORA), the Custom Residential Architects Network (CRAN) and Forever Young Treehouses. These days he is focused on elevating the design conversation throughout the school.
Panel:
Tiny Houses—Wedging Open the Conversation About Housing and Community
with John Connell (moderator), Mary Simons + youth journalists of Conversations From the Open Road, Stephen Marshall, Ingrid Pixley, and Mary Chapman
Community Vision Stage, 12:00pm
Tiny Houses are not the end-all-be-all answer to housing, however, tiny houses do wedge open conversations around expanding what we need to do to meet our communities’ growing housing needs. This panel will share personal experiences and efforts in their own communities and those they have visited.
Talk:
Neighborhood Prefab Factories: Barn Raisings for Today’s Housing Crisis!
Community Vision Stage, 3:00pm
Sustainability really becomes effective at watershed scale.
Resiliency can only be accomplished at regional scale.
Likewise, access to affordable homes is most achievable at the neighborhood scale.
A small prefab factory in a struggling neighborhood becomes the mycelium that sprouts needed homes throughout the ‘hood.
This factory quickly creates jobs and develops a local labor force. These grow into trades with applications outside of the factory – carpenter, plumber, truck driver, estimator, project manager….
In one week, a vacant lot or derelict building suddenly sprouts a new, net-zero home. A week later there’s a duplex down the block. And next month, three tiny houses around a tiny courtyard.
Every day, a neighborhood factory worker walks by, like; “Yeah! That’s Taylor’s place! I installed the windows in the factory just a few weeks ago.”
Better than “units” supplied by subsidized government programs, a home built by neighbors in the local factory strengthens the neighborhood fabric. Like a barn raising, the community comes together to build something and in doing so, recognizes common cause and local community.
(oh and did I mention that all the prefabs are net-zero?)