ABSTRACT

I was honored to have worked for the Parsons Healthy Materials Lab, working alongside Research Meryl Smith and Co-Director Alison Mears, designing affordable healthy hemp home templates for the elderly population for the White Earth Nation in Minnesota.

Quoted from the project page on the Parsons Healthy Material Lab’s Website:

This ongoing project is beginning with a newly constructed home for a grandmother and her four grandchildren, designed to provide security and respite for the family for generations to come. The home will be situated on forested land, purchased from the reservation, with views out to a pond beyond. This accessible and healthy home will have walls constructed of locally sourced wood framing and hemp bale insulation, with a wood rainscreen on the exterior and a plaster finish inside. The interior is designed with healthier finish materials: a kitchen made of formaldehyde free plywood, mineral paints and healthy floor finishes. The interior also provides space for the family to come together at meals and around the fireplace, a kitchen that can be used to cook meals as a family, and a playful kid’s room where the grandchildren can retreat to play or produce artwork with their grandmother. Once completed, the house will provide an example of a new form of sustainable residential construction.
Together, we will propose designs for new homes that celebrate the long lives of the women, enhance their current work, build places of sanctuary for themselves, their grandchildren, and future generations on their own land. Instead of being beholden to others, the nation will chart its own future through innovative local construction. The first homes will be constructed of hemp combined with local lime to create new models of sustainable, healthy homes. We will test new construction systems and propose training programs that will create new jobs. Through this process we will create models of prototypical housing for the future: healthy homes for all people.

I worked on this project after I graduated from Parsons until I left the lab in August 2022.