Interview | Glenn Katz

Background: @Manuel Joao Mart Cunha Xavier Ferreira @Sean Yepez presented Glenn a brief idea of building homes to support cooperative rural farming, mixing people of different walks of life, with the intent to share, collaborate, and foster diversity

• Q: What kind of diversity would you like to foster - economic, ethnic, social, job (i.e. bankers, tech workers, farmers)?
• A: So often when we think of affordable housing, we think of places to house “them” but the assumption is that those building it are going to continue living in their own world
• Part of our mission: we have to take care of the physical need, comfortable and supportive of family, work opportunities, holistically about society: Connection between technically oriented and education and folks who are just working in a different way, so we do have a symbiotic relationship
• AWARE AND RESPECTFUL OF ANOTHER - social message is to not stratify, people but instead intermix them, where they picnic, cook, & see each other
• VISION IS VERY POWERFUL, INTEGRATED, agro- holistic symbiosis
• Working in the farm will give non career farmers awareness
• suggestion to include Micro-markets: where people who don’t live in the community can come and learn, interact, learn, try the food
• Glenn lives in Campbell, where there is a farmers market on Main Street, about 4 blocks long, everyone comes together at this farmers market, groceries, food, enjoying each other, strolling.
• The event is good but the collaboration is confined to Sunday, where 4pm the farmers and vendors go home.
• The beauty of this project is to extend that relationship, i.e. perpetual farmers market.
• Sharing and symbiosis. Shared power source, shred way of collecting rainwater.
• Community schools, participate in the classrooms.
• Rebuild the things that used to make small towns work- beauty in human connection
• Anti-thesis of other projects in class: others imagine urban microdwellings where people live in isolation wearing VR glasses. Glenn sees us going in another direction, add back personal connection.
• we got away from this in cities, so we couldn’t or it wasn’t efficient to live in communities
• engage with people socially, don't have to be, working from home
• whole holistic vision, that im dr. need to get in touch with our humanity.
• connecting in a way to help develop empathy and understanding. improve everyones quality of life.
• “I like when I walk down the street” “I know this person who works in coffee sho” life is a little bit more richer when you have that
• Resilience: Efficiency that you gain by sharing because you don’t have unused hanging on the side
• Dealing with the unknown is we double up resources; because we try to live independently, we overcompensate because no one wants to run out; when you start thinking about things as a hive, it’s all these things that work together in a network, you get efficiency
• concept of insurance
• solar on each roof
• water catchment centrally aggregated
• the north facing roofs
• the south facing roofs will have solar
• carport - not just roof
• having the community together solves better
• community has fifth percent of the cars.
• Farm equipment
• pooled cars, maintenance
• part of the community have access to fleet of cars
• shared farm equipment
• efficiency of being able to share
• guest houses, share, available to others
• Manel’s borrow a carrot story: the difference is day and night, Portugal vs uk. would think crazy in Carro.
• There is resilience in co-operative living; Manuel gave a story of being able to borrow a carrot from his neighbors easily in Portugal, but in the UK where he studies, his neighbors would think him crazy for asking.
• California has a lot of land, distributed network of communities. Live in Fresno, lower land value, everything becomes more affordable.
• so now people don't have to live in the rvs.
• New materials will be available by 2050, consider what’s out now and what is coming later:
• Steel is carbon heavy
• Wood can regrow, bamboo
• Growing materials
• repurposing plastic water bottles
• heavy earthen construction earth bricks - we used to know how to use these
• Adobe
• Look at the work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, beautiful work with bricks and glass
• house with glass blocks - part of the whole sustainability message, someone could build it themselves
• Could build it yourself, create your own structures. Empowering of the people, someone is going to join us. Someone is going to join us. Build them a house. into stackable unit that people can implement themselves.
• Cork. for walls, for floors. farm cork in a sustainable way.
• Part of the community could be growing the materials that you need. recycle it into your own building materials.
• Shred things , break things, waste could become a building product.
• Decide as a team what we want to feature on Wednesday.
• How you can sell them on this vision most effectively?
• This whole vision is so cool, could talk about it for 2 hours, but task is to communicate in 4-5 the vision. don’t waste time on technical details. Keep thinking about the beauty of the vision. Sell on the possibility of a brighter future.
• Social side
• Housing side
• Agro aspect
• Wavecrest 2050.

Housing for farmworkers, Silicon Valley people. Good example. Place could be one of these communities.

Vision vision.

People will actually want to live there not just work there and live in container or RV

Agrofocused communities

• What are the lives of farmers like in your hometown? What issues do they face with their housing?
• Typically, what are the sizes of farmworkers homes?
• Are the farmworkers seasonal or yearround?
• What is the source of energy for most of these farms?
• What is the waste disposal system like? Plumbing and garbage?
• From an architectural viewpoint, what do you see is the biggest issue with their housing systems?
• In 25 years, what do you think will be the biggest issue farmworkers are facing in terms of housing?
• In what ways do you think the priorities of farmers will change over the next 25 years?
• What types of technologies do you think most farmers in your hometown or in HMB would most quickly flock towards if available? Why?
• How sustainable would you say the farmworkers housing is in your hometown? How could it be improved?