Imagine living in a neighborhood with people you care about and people who care about you. Imagine sitting on your front porch as the light begins to dim and the temperature starts to drop in the early evening hours, chatting with friends and watching as the neighborhood kids scramble up and down slides at the park across the street. Imagine falling asleep knowing there will be no energy bill for a house that stays cool during the summer and warm during the winter.
This is the image Connecting Caring Communities executive director Brad Carter envisions for the North Park neighborhood in Abilene.
The vision began in 2003, when CCC started working in the North Park area between Hardin Simmons University and I-20. According to statistics provided by the Abilene Reporter News, crime offenses in the North Park Neighborhood were reduced by half from 2005 to 2008. Carter said reduction in crime over the past seven years is directly related to the relationships CCC has formed with North Park neighbors, the 400,000 pounds of trash they have hauled from the area, and their Friendship House, which offers after-daycare activities.
“Now we see neighbors who really are caring for each other,” Carter said. “It’s really about breaking down isolation for people to come together.”
The next step in completing the North Park vision came in 2008 when the Dodge Jones Foundation donated a block of land to CCC for a mixed-income housing development.
The benefits of mixed-income housing do not lie within the structures themselves, but within the lasting community these buildings foster. Carter said creating bonds between people of different social classes is one way to produce the type of capital that moves people out of poverty.
“It opens up a world of understanding middle class rules,” Carter said.
With plans to build 10 sustainable and energy-efficient homes – four available to qualifying low to moderate income families and the other six available to homebuyers of any income level – Carter and developers hope the North Park Development Project can bridge the gap between disparate economic levels in Abilene.
After several of assistant professor of art and design Brandon Young’s pre-architecture students presented design layouts for the NPDP, one was chosen as the final plan in fall 2008. Young and his students have provided CCC with a constant stream of ideas for the development project since it began. The classes have also volunteered manual labor on a regular basis.
“Class designs have played a role with how I come back and talk with the designer,” Carter said.
Ultimately, the ideas contrived in Young’s classes benefit both CCC and ACU interior design and pre-architecture students.
“The work our students have done has been good preparation for a solution to be found,” said Young. “When you draw something on the page it means you have to build it. Hopefully [seeing it] will make them better designers.”
The innovative concepts used by architectural and design contractor, Universal Design Consortium Inc. also provide students the chance to learn about an alternative building style uncommon in current regional building methods.
“This is a completely different design of a house,” said Melanie Bartholomew, junior interior design major from San Antonio. “It was really nice seeing something sustainable going up that can also be low-cost for the families that live there.”
UDC combines old and new methods of construction in an attempt to build completely energy-efficient homes with non-electrical heating and cooling capabilities. Although innovative, the company is applying
design concepts that have been in place for centuries.
“Building out of earthen construction is something that has been done on every continent for thousands of years,” said NPDP site manager, Blake Smith.
Builders compress soil from the Abilene area to form the basic composition of the houses. A compressed earth block (CEB) machine can make up to 5,000 blocks a day, the equivalent of a 1,200 square foot house. CEBs are both cost-efficient to make because they are comprised from local resources and cost-efficient to maintain because they are a phase-change material.
“They act as a heat sink,” Young said. “When the sun beats down on the walls they absorb heat. When temperatures drop, that heat will dissipate.”
This results in a structure that can operate with an average electrical reduction of up to 65 percent and a water consumption reduction of 90 percent as compared with a traditional stick-frame home, according to the UDC website.
Although CEBs are still a rare building method in the United States and mixed-income housing is a relatively new concept, Carter said the true innovation behind the NPDP lies in the synthesis of energy efficiency and affordability, which ultimately creates sustainability.
“Sustainability implies more than lowering bills,” Smith said. “It also has social implications. We want to provide the setting for human interactions to occur.”
These social implications – and the desire for deep and intentionalt interactions that first prompted CCC’s work in North Park – remain the focus as the completion of the first home is set for sometime in November.
Imagine living in a neighborhood with people you care about and people who care for you. Imagine sitting on your front porch as the light begins to dim and the temperature starts to drop in the early evening hours, chatting with friends and watching as the neighborhood kids scramble up and down slides at the park across the street. Imagine falling asleep knowing there will be no energy bill for a house that stays cool during the summer afile:///private/var/folders/5d/5dWf+HzoF6864VLQ0xuSpU+++TQ/Cleanup%20At%20Startup/InDesign%20Snippets/Snippet_302A3411C.indsnd warm during the winter.
This is the image Connecting Caring Communities executive director Brad Carter envisions for the North Park neighborhood in Abilene.
The vision began in 2003, when CCC started working in the North Park area between Hardin Simmons University and I-20. According to statistics provided by the Abilene Reporter News, crime offenses in the North Park Neighborhood were reduced in half from 2005 to 2008. Carter said reduction in crime over the past seven years is directly related to the relationships CCC has formed with North Park neighbors, the 400,000 pounds of trash they have hauled from the area, and their Friendship House, which offers after-daycare activities.
“Now we see neighbors who really are caring for each other,” Carter said. “It’s really about breaking down isolation for people to come together.”
The next step in completing the North Park vision began in 2008 when the Dodge Jones Foundation donated a block of land to CCC for a mixed-income housing development.
The benefits of mixed-income housing do not lie within the structures themselves, but within the lasting community these buildings foster. Carter said creating bonds between people of different social classes is one way to produce the type of capital that moves people out of poverty.
“It opens up a world of understanding middle class rules,” Carter said.
With plans to build 10 sustainable and energy-efficient homes – four available to qualifying low to moderate income families and the other six available to homebuyers of any income level – Carter and developers hope the North Park Development Project can bridge the gap between disparate economic levels in Abilene.
The final layout for the NPDP were developed in fall 2008 by one of assistant professor of art and design Brandon Young’s pre-architecture students. Young and his students have provided CCC with a constant stream of ideas for the development project since it began. The classes have also volunteered manual labor on a regular basis.
“Class designs have played a role with how I come back and talk with the designer,” Carter said.
Ultimately, the ideas contrived in Young’s classes benefit both CCC and ACU interior design and pre-architecture students.
“The work our students have done has been good preparation for a solution to be found,” said Young. “When you draw something on the page it means you have to build it. Hopefully [seeing it] will make them better designers.”
The innovative concepts used by architectural and design contractor, Universal Design Consortium Inc. also provide students the chance to learn about an alternative building style uncommon to current regional building methods.
“This is a completely different design of a house,” said Melanie Bartholomew, junior interior design major from San Antonio. “It was really nice seeing something sustainable going up that can also be low-cost for the families that live there.”
UDC combines old and new methods of construction in an attempt to build completely energy-efficient homes with non-electrical heating and cooling capabilities. Although innovative, the company is applying design concepts that have been in place for centuries.
“Building out of earthen construction is something that has been done on every continent for thousands of years,” said NPDP site manager, Blake Smith.
Builders compress soil from the Abilene area to form the basic composition of the houses. A compressed earth block (CEB) machine can make up to 5,000 blocks a day, the equivalent to a 1,200 square foot house. CEBs are both cost-efficient to make because they are comprised from local resources and cost-efficient to maintain because they are a phase-change material.
“They act as a heat sink,” Young said. “When the sun beats down on the walls they absorb heat. When temperatures drop, that heat will dissipate.”
This results in a structure that can operate with an average electrical reduction of up to 65 percent and a water consumption reduction of 90 percent as compared with a traditional stick-frame home, according to the UDC website.
Although CEBs are still a rare building method in the United States and mixed-income housing is a relatively new concept, Carter said the true innovation behind the NPDP lies in the synthesis of energy efficiency and affordability, which ultimately creates sustainability.
“Sustainability implies more than lowering bills,” Smith said. “It also has social implications. We want to provide the setting for human interactions to occur.”
These social implications – and the desire for deep and intentional interactions that first prompted CCC’s work in North Park – remain the focus as the completion of the first home is set for sometime in November.
