We're all in Katrina now

This is mostly a test of how my blog at sinisterplod.blogspot.com
handles pictures in posts. Thanks for your indulgence.

Hurricane Katrina gave us our first glimpse of homes "underwater"

Urban Re-skilling Rural Tools

Signs of hope like crocuses in the snow. Maybe we can expect a new wave
of urban community building in the foreclosed wasteland of the rust
belt. These folks are showing a way forward.

http://www.powerhouseproject.com

SOCIAL EXPERIMENT
The Power house Project is first and foremost designed to stimulate
communication and action excitement within an otherwise challenging,
albeit unique Detroit neighborhood by way of mining out the positive
and productive aspects of the neighborhood by becoming a space where
people feel comfortable to share ideas, knowledge and expertise about
the fundamentals of neighborhood living, i.e., gardening, house work,
new technologies, safety, and so on. The Power House will serve a dual
purpose to produce educate and sustain the best aspects of the Detroit
neighborhood while at the same time providing a location for visitors
to interact with the neighbors and the neighbors to interact with
visitors, specifically artists and musicians. The Power House is a
magnet for gathering resources, energy, social ideas and change.

Each move we make to the house is thought of as a performance in that
the house is situated in a highly visible location and has no trouble
in attracting an audience and help from the immediate neighbors. Each
action is an unusual and complex move, not within the norm of what is a
familiar way to build, renovate or garden. This is intentional for two
reasons: [1] We are attempting to develop a way of renovating with as
little money as possible by using resources that are unique to our
contemporary life such as the internet, renewable energy an old pick up
truck and help from local skilled and unskilled workers. [2] We would
like to prove that you can renovate old Detroit houses cheaply, but
with even more quality, efficiency and functional as well aesthetic
design than if you simply bought all the raw materials from a big box
store, hired a professional crew and finished the project in a week.
This however is a slow process.

Time is slow, but of the essence. By slowing the time we increase the
opportunities of finding the right materials for the right price and
the right people for the right job, but most important having the most
fun while we meet the most people.

LONG TERM GOAL
The first Power House structure is a typical foreclosed two bedroom
working class Detroit house. Rather than view this and other vacant
properties as a drain on the tax base, bank holdings, and the local
economics of lowered property values, Power House flips this notion of
financial strain to one of community asset. Power House seeks to create
a network of mini-power stations from vacant properties by outfitting
houses with 'green' energy sources - wind, solar, biomass - thus
creating localized networks of sustainable power, creating a strong
sence of place and empowerment.

Each Power House would be capable of creating enough energy for its own
consumption and produce enough excess power for at least one
neighboring home. This is feasible due to the extremely low cost of
purchasing property in Detroit and the amount of available small single
family vacant homes in Detroit. A certain percentage of each Power
House would also function as neighborhood hubs by producing not only
electricity but also a new point of identity, gathering place of
creative exchange, thus a new type of neighborhood where undesirable
homes become experimental factories for community action and power.

WHO
The Power House was started by the dynamic Design 99 duo Gina Reichert
and Mitch Cope in March of 2008 with the purchase of one house and two
empty lots totaling $4,900.

Currently we are in the process of bringing other artists in to help
set up a small neighborhood radio station and sculpted landscape work.