Creative houses from reclaimed stuff Dan Phillips

thank you very much I have a few

pictures and I’ll talk a little bit

about how I’m able to do what I do all

these houses are built from between 70

and 80 percent recycled materials stuff

that was headed mulcher the landfill the

burn pile it was all just gone this is

the first house I built this double

front door here with the three light

transom that was headed to the landfill

have a little turret there and then

these buttons on the corbels here right

there those are hickory nuts and these

these buttons there those are chicken

eggs and of course first you have

breakfast and then you you fill the

shelf alla bondo and paint it nail it up

and you have an architectural button in

just a fraction at the time then this is

I look at the inside you can see the

three light transom there with the

eyebrow windows certainly an

architectural antique headed to the land

leaving the lock set is probably worth

two hundred dollars everything in the

kitchen was salvaged there’s a 1952

O’Keefe Merritt stove if you like to

cook cool stove this is going up into

the turret I got that staircase for $20

including delivery to my lot

then looking up in the turret you see

there are bulges and pokes and sags and

so forth well if that ruins your life

well then you shouldn’t live there this

is a laundry chute and this right here

is a shoe last and those are those cast

iron things you see at antique shops so

I had one of those so I made some

low-tech gadgetry there where you just

stomp on the shoe last and then the door

flies open you throw your laundry down

and then if you’re smart enough it goes

into a basket on top of the washer if

not it goes goes into the toilet there’s

a bathtub I made I made out a scrap 2x4

here start with a rim there and then

glued and nailed it up into a flat

corbelled up and flipped it over then to

did the two profiles on this side it’s a

two-person tub after all it’s not just a

question of Hygiene but there’s a

possibility of recreation as well then

this

this faucet here is just a piece of

Osage orange it looks a little phallic

but after all it’s a bathroom then this

is a house based on a Budweiser can it

doesn’t look like a can of beer but the

design takeoffs are absolutely

unmistakable the barley hops design

worked up into the eaves then the dental

work comes directly off the canvas red

white blue and silver then these corbels

going down underneath the eaves are that

little design that comes off the can I

just put a can on a copier and kept

enlarging it until I got the size I want

then

on the can it says this is the famous

Budweiser beer we know of no other beer

of all blah blah blah blah blah so we

changed that and put this is the famous

Budweiser house we don’t know of any

other house and so forth and so on then

there’s a dead bolt

it’s a fence from a 1930 shaper which is

a very angry woodworking machine and

they gave me the fence but they didn’t

give me the shaper so we made a dead

bolt out of it

that’ll keep bull elephants out I

promise and sure enough we’ve had no no

problems with bull elephants the shower

is intended to simulate a glass of beer

we got bubbles going up there and then

suds at the top with lumpy tiles where

do you get lumpy tiles well of course

you don’t but I get a lot of toilets and

so you just dispatch your toilet with a

hammer and then you have lumpy tiles and

then the faucet there is a beer tap then

this panel of glass is the same panel of

glass that occurs in every middle-class

front door in America we’re getting

tired of it it’s kind of cliched now so

if you put it in the front door your

design fails so don’t put it in the

front door put it somewhere else at

pretty panel glass but then if you put

up the front door Oh beeps out you’re

trying to be like those guys and you

didn’t make it so don’t put it there

then another bathroom upstairs this

light up here is the same light that

occurs in every middle-class foyer in

America don’t put it in the foyer put it

in the shower or in the closet but not

in the foyer then somebody gave me of

the day so it got a bidet this little

house here those branches there are made

out of bought art or Osage orange and

these pictures will keep scrolling as I

talk a little bit in order to do what I

do you have to understand what causes

waste in the building industry our

housing has become a commodity and I’ll

talk a little bit about that but the

first cause of waste is probably even

buried in our DNA human beings have a

need for maintaining consistency of the

apperceptive mass what does that mean

what it means is for every perception we

have it needs to tally with the one like

it before

or we don’t have continuity and we’ve

become a little bit disorient

so I can show you an object you’ve never

seen before oh that’s a cell phone but

you’ve never seen this one before what

you’re doing is sizing up the pattern of

structural features here and then you go

through your data banks the river till

fog that’s a cell phone if I took a bite

out of it you go wait a sec

that’s not a cellphone that’s that’s one

of those new chocolate cell phones and

you’d have to start a new category right

between cell phones and chocolate that’s

that’s how we process information so you

translate that to the building industry

if we have a wall of window panes and

one pane is cracked we go oh dear that’s

cracked let’s repair let’s take it out

throw it away so nobody can use it and

put a new one in because that’s what you

do with a crack pane never mind that it

doesn’t affect our lives at all it only

rattles that expected pattern and unity

of structural features however if we

took a small hammer and we added cracks

to all the other windows then we have a

pattern because Gestalt psychology

emphasizes a recognition pattern over

parts that comprise a pattern that’s

nice so that serves me everyday

repetition creates pattern if I have 100

these 100 those it doesn’t make any

difference what these and those are if I

can repeat anything I have the

possibility of a pattern from hickory

nuts and chicken eggs shards of glass

branch it doesn’t make any difference

that causes a lot of waste in the

building industry second is Friedrich

Nietzsche along about 1885 wrote a book

titled the birth of tragedy and in there

he said that cultures tend to swing

between one of two perspectives on the

one hand we have an Apollonian

perspective which is very crisp and

premeditated and intellectualized and

perfect on the other end of the spectrum

we have a Dionysian perspective which is

more given to the passions and intuition

tolerant of organic texture and human

gesture so the way the Apollonian

personality takes a picture or hangs a

picture is they’ll get out a transit and

a laser level and a micrometer okay

honey a thousandth of an inch to the

left that’s where we want the picture

right perfect predicated on plumb level

Square and centered the Dionysian

personality takes the picture and goes

that’s the difference I feature blemish

I feature organic process dead center

John Dewey Apollonian mindset creates

mountains of waste if something isn’t

perfect if it doesn’t line up with that

premeditated model dumpster whoop

scratch dumpster oop this loop that

landfill landfill landfill the third

thing is arguably the industrial

revolution started in the Renaissance

with the rise of humanism then got a

little jump-start along about the French

Revolution by the middle of the 19th

century it’s in full flower and we have

Duma Flo G’s and gizmos and contraptions

that will do anything that we up to that

point had to do by hand so now we have

standardized materials well trees don’t

grow 2 inches by 4 inches 8 10 and 12

feet tall we create mountains of waste

and they’re doing a pretty good job

there in the forest working all the

byproduct of their industry with OSB and

particle board and so forth and so on

but it does no good to be responsible at

the point of harvest in the forest if

consumers are wasting the harvest at the

point of consumption and that’s what’s

happening and so something isn’t

standard oops dumpster oop this ooh or

no if you buy a 2x4 and it’s not

straight you can take it back I’m so

sorry sir

we’ll get you straight water well I

feature all those warped things because

repetition crease pattern is from the

dining perspective the fourth thing is

Labor is disproportionately more

expensive than materials well that’s

just a myth there’s a story Jim told us

one of the guys I trained I said Jim

it’s time now I got a job for you as a

foreman on a framing crew it’s time for

you to go down I just don’t think I’m

ready Jim it’s time you down Oh

so he hired on and he was out there with

his tape measure going through the trash

heap looking for header material which

is the board that goes over a door think

he didn’t press his boss that’s how I

taught him to do it and the

superintendent said what are you doing

all just looking for some header

material waiting for that that Kudo said

no no I’m not paying you to go through

the trash get back to work

and he had the wherewithal to say he

said you know if you were paying me $300

an hour I can see how you might say that

but right now I’m saving you $5.00 a

minute

do the math good call tell us from now

on you guys hit this pile first and the

irony is wasn’t very good at math but

once in a while you get access to the

control room and then you can kind of

mess with the dials and that’s what

happened there the fifth thing is that

maybe after twenty five hundred years

Plato is still having his way with us in

his notion of perfect forms he said that

we have on our noggin the perfect idea

of what we want and we force

environmental resources to accommodate

that so we have all have in our head the

perfect house the American dream

which is a house the dream house the

problem is we can’t afford it so we have

the American Dream look-alike which is a

mobile home now there’s a blight on the

planet it’s a chattel mortgage just like

furniture just like a car you write the

check and instantly it depreciates 30%

after a year you can’t get insurance on

everything you have in it only on 70%

wired with 14 gauge wire typically

nothing wrong with that unless you ask

it to do what 12-gauge wire is supposed

to do unless what happens it out gases

formaldehyde so much so that there is a

federal law in place to warn new mobile

home buyers that formaldehyde atmosphere

danger are we being just numbing ly

stupid the walls are this thick the

whole thing has the structural value of

corn

so I thought Palm Harbor village was

over there no now we had a wind last

night it’s gone now then when they

degrade what do you do with them now all

that that Apollonian platonic model is

what the building industry is predicated

on and there are a number of things that

exacerbate that one is that all the

professionals all the tradesmen vendors

inspectors engineers architects all

think like this and then it works its

way back to the consumer who demands the

same model it’s a self-fulfilling

prophecy we can’t get out of it then

here come the market ears and the

advertisers who we buy stuff we didn’t

know we needed all we have to do is look

at what one company did with carbonated

prune juice how disgusting but you know

what they did they hooked a metaphor

into it said drink Dr Pepper and pretty

soon we’re swelling that stuff by the

lake full by the billions of gallons it

doesn’t even have real prunes that even

keep you regular by eye oh my that makes

it worse and we get sucked into that

faster than anything then a man named

Jean Paul Sartre wrote a book titled

Being and Nothingness it’s pretty quick

read you can snap through it maybe maybe

two years if you read eight hours a day

in there he talked about the divided

self you said human beings act

differently when they know they’re alone

then when they know somebody else is

around so if I’m eating spaghetti and I

know I’m alone I can eat like a backhoe

like I like my mom my sleeve napkin on

the table chew with my mouth open make

little noises scratch wherever I want

but as soon as you walk in I go I’m

spaghetti shows they’re not going to

happen Half Price chew with my mouth

closed no scratching now what I’m doing

is fulfilling your expectations of how I

should live my life I feel that

expectation and so I accommodate it and

I’m living my life according to what you

expect me to do that happens in the

building industry as well that’s why all

of our subdivisions look the same

sometimes we even have these formalized

cultural expectations I’ll bet all your

shoes match sure enough we all buy into

that and with gated communities we have

a formalized expectation with a

homeowner’s association sometimes those

guys are Nazis my OMA that exacerbates

and continues this model the last thing

is gregariousness human beings are

social species we like to hang together

in groups just like ville de beats just

like lines build abuse don’t hang with

lines because lines eat ville de beast

human beings are like that we do what

that group does that we’re trying to

identify with and so you see this in

junior high a lot those kids they’ll

work all summer long kill themselves so

that they can afford one pair of

designer jeans so along about September

they can stride in and go I’m important

today so don’t touch my designer jeans I

see you don’t have designer jeans you

don’t you’re not one of the beautiful

but see I’m one of the beautiful people

see my jeans right there is reason

enough to have uniforms and so that

happens in the building industry as well

we have confused Maslow’s hierarchy of

needs just a little bit on the bottom

tier we have basic needs shelter

clothing food water mating so forth

second security

third relationships fourth status

self-esteem that is vanity and we’re

taking vanity and shoving it down here

and so we end up with vain decisions

and we can’t even afford our mortgage we

can’t afford to eat anything except

beans that is our housing has become a

commodity and it takes a little bit of

nerve to dive into those primal

terrifying parts of ourselves and make

our own decisions and not make our

housing or commodity but make it

something that bubbles up from seminal

sources that takes a little bit of nerve

and darn it once in a while you fail but

that’s okay if failure destroys you then

you can’t do this I fail all the time

every day and I’ve had some whopping

failures I promise we’re big public

humiliating embarrassing failures

everybody points in laughs and he said

he tried it a fifth time and it still

didn’t work about a early on

contractors come by and say Dan you’re a

cute little bunny but you know this just

isn’t gonna work once you do this once

you do that and your instinct is

disabled once you suck an egg but you

don’t say that because they’re the guys

you’re targeting and so what we’ve done

and this isn’t just in housing its

clothing and food and our transportation

needs or energy we sprawl just a little

bit and when I get a little bit of press

I hear from people all over the world

and we may have invented access but the

problem of waste is worldwide we are we

were in trouble and I don’t wear ammo

belts criss-crossing my chest and a red

bandana but we’re clearly in trouble and

what we need to do is reconnect with

those really primal parts of ourselves

and make some decisions and say you know

I think I would like to put CDs across

the wall there what do you think honey

if it doesn’t work take it down

what we need to do is reconnect with who

we really are

and that’s thrilling indeed thank you

very much