Austerity, Scarcity, and Rural Studio

20k Idella's Home - Rural Studio

http://ruralstudio.org/project/20k-idellas-home/

    Scarcity and Austerity run hand and hand. Governments and those interested in sustainability always talk about using less and less to be more "sustainable". The world has a finite amount of resources and many believe that the population is out growing the amount of resources we have. They also have not looked around and done a deep dive into what is available. While the lavish 1% pays for whatever materials they need to construct a home (from wherever around the world they want), the remaining 99% is asked to ''just be more sustainable". The "Scarcity contra Austerity" article really challenges the idea of what true sustainability is. They argue that with a deeper dive in the understanding of materials and their life cycles we may find more materials available in which we can use to become even more sustainable than those before us. They argue that the sub par goal of being sustainable simply to give the same standards to those generations after us simply isn't enough. I believe this raises the question of: should we create a standard and only 'maintain this standard', or are we setting a standard to become better as time progresses? Through understanding why things are scarce in the first place, we may also find creative and innovative solutions to complex problems in regards to practical re-use of materials. 

    Rural Studio's 20k challenge caught my eye and interest. Rural Studio, apart of Auburn's school of architecture looks to create housing for low income families in rural western Alabama. The challenge was to create housing for those low income families for 20,000 dollars. "We arrived at the original $20,000 (12,000 for materials and $8,000 for labor and profit) sum as a target 30-year mortgage ticket because it reflected what a person on social security or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families could comfortably afford to pay each month after other living expenses, which amounted to about $100 per month." I found this challenge particularly interesting because while the students and professors are not looking to follow this idea of Austerity and minimize traditional building techniques down to a 20k budget, but rather use their creativity and innovation to figure out ways to work with a budget, allowing for as quality of a space possible with sometimes untraditional building methods or materials; challenging the idea of traditional sustainability and re-using materials in innovative and truly "sustainable" manners. These ideas are apparent through: completely reusing salvaged materials (not using energy to transform said materials into something else), designing flexible spaces for multipurpose activities, or designing spaces that are also sustainable to live in. 

    Can we as architects and designers re-purpose existing materials in high end projects as well? Are there ways to re-use extra or left over materials without using energy to transform them into something else in high end design as well as low income designs? Or will high end design for the 1% always be asked to use top of the chain materials from the depleting rain forests in Brazil such as Epay? Or the highest of quality stone slabs from the stone quarries of Italy? There has to be another way.