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