The home for Janet Yanito and family, including boyfriend, cowboy Merlin, was intended to be formally as simple as possible. (Interesting that a Navajo Indian would consider himself a cowboy, but encouraging, given the DesignBuildBLUFF philosophy of providing -- or more, guiding -- the world toward a sense of Compassionate Sustainability.) It is essentially comprised of two rectangles incorporating an appropriate and proportionate tension. A third quadrant completes the composition as a traditional Navajo ‘shade structure’, a trellised roof for the cultural identity, and, because it is sited north of the main story-and-a-half high home, wholly shaded from the intensity of the summer sun.
The program for the ‘home’ portion of the complex allowed for a master bedroom, another for Janet’s eighth-grade age daughter, Holly, and bathroom assembled along a south-facing hallway, designed in typical vernacular fashion, roof overhangs calculated to bathe the concrete thermal mass flooring in winter sun while shading the entire south wall in summer (not exactly rocket science, but connected to a common sense that was thrown under the proverbial bus during the second half of our 20th century wantonness created by cheap energy). Yet on the reservation energy is still quite scarce, and building sustainably is not only a goal, but a necessity. A loft space was requested and happily designed to house in comfort Janet’s five other children who visit from time to time. Navajo families and clans are quite seriously and lovingly bonded. When the windows in the loft area were discovered to be too small for the codes concerning life safety egress, a ‘design opportunity‘ was presented to the students in the field, as will always happen, which is another tenet of the DesignBuildBLUFF manner of teaching, namely that design does not end with the completion of construction documents, but in fact, may be just beginning. It can be argued that design might never end, as in the adage that a piece of art is never really finished, but abandoned. In this case, a door was added for egress, and the barn-wood-siding rain screen exterior was re-contemplated to form a ladder, a beautiful solution to a vexing problem. Because we design and build for the Rez, there is no oversight concerning intelligent, life-safety codes, but we adhere -- we are teaching responsibility as much as building and problem-solving. (As it happened, the loft space was so inviting and comfortable and cozy, Holly claimed it for her own. It is accessed by a ship’s ladder, sensible code in these parts of the world, where economics put the county, San Juan, as the poorest in the nation.) There is also a ‘great’ room, in the sense that it consists of the kitchen, eating and reading/television spaces. There is what the students deemed a ‘bump-out’, for spatial interest, which resulted in a brilliant solution, complete with horizontally laminated, multicolored, varying thicknesses of a product called 3-Form, which provides mesmerizing translucent light. The main home was built with SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels), OSB (oriented strand board) sandwiched around 8-10 inches of rigid insulation, glued together for sheer and bearing. It erects quickly, in this case in about four days, and hence allows time for the wonderfully creative details within.
Janet is an accomplished artist selling throughout the southwest when not catering to her beloved elementary school children, driving a school bus great distances through the vast emptiness of the reservation. Her pottery studio is a load-bearing straw-bale construction finished inside and out with natural earthen plaster. A drainage sink beside her work table is cleverly made of exhaust pipes harvested from the ubiquitous discarded automobiles nearby and throughout the reservation.
Total square footage: 1100 square feet. Total cost: $42/square foot. Much of the material is natural, re-purposed and donated, and labor, as always, is provided by students.
