A PATH to the Future
Concept Home Promotes Flexibility, Affordability
What happens when housing industry leaders put their heads
together to come up with a design for the ideal home of the
future? A select audience of housing industry and policy officials
got a sneak peek at the answer this past June, when the Industry
Steering Committee of the Partnership for Advancing Technology
in Housing (PATH) – the public-private partnership for
housing innovation administered by HUD’s Office of Policy
Development and Research — unveiled the first architectural
model of the PATH Concept Home in Washington, D.C. The model
was made possible by the generous support and sponsorship
of Dupont and the Portland Cement Association.
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With a keen awareness of the risks involved in predicting what
almost anything might look like in years to come, PATH and its
partners have turned a well-polished lens upon the horizon,
and come up with something that just might stand up to the passage
of time. The Concept Home demonstrates advanced technologies
and building practices that hold enormous potential for improving
the American home. The project is quite ambitious, in that it
proposes changes in the home-building industry that would make
home design and construction more efficient, predictable, and
controllable, with a median cycle time of 20 working days from
groundbreaking to occupancy. These methods will result in cost
savings that will make homeownership available to an estimated
90 percent of the population by 2010.
“Working with builders and manufacturers, we will
over the next year develop detailed plans and specifications
for this home and, in the not too distant future, work with
the housing industry to build this home,” said Darlene
Williams, HUD General Deputy Assistant Secretary, who addressed
a crowd of builders, manufacturers, congressional staffers,
and various housing industry professionals at a private reception
in Union Station. “The future is exciting, and we invite
you all to join us as we work to improve the affordability,
durability, and quality of tomorrow’s homes.”
The Concept Home is an outgrowth of PATH’s Technology
Roadmap: Whole House and Building Process Redesign, and the
Technology Scanning report. Modern homes are currently built
to be inflexible, with systems tangled behind interior walls
and embedded in structural elements. But the home of the future
will combine functions that make better use of labor, materials,
time, and money, consequently reducing installation time and
cost.
The Concept Home represents one vision for the future of
housing, with an emphasis on flexibility of systems to meet
the specific needs of the homeowner. Innovations in the Concept
Home include flexible interior walls that can accommodate
family changes, customizable designs that will give the home
the quality and curb appeal of a custom-built house without
the high cost, and improved production methods that will speed
construction and improve durability.
Roger Glunt of Glunt Development Company and past chair
of the PATH Industry Steering Committee served as the evening’s
host. Other speakers included architect Chris French of Torti
Gallas and Partners, Inc., the architectural firm that designed
the Concept Home model; Bill Asdal of Asdal Builders, a member
of the Industry Steering Committee; and Roger Lewis, architect
and author of The Washington Post column “Shaping the
City,” who noted the growing demand for – and
shrinking supply of — affordable housing.
“The homes in the model and graphics are intentionally
traditional in nature,” said Chris French, a key contributor
to the Concept Home design. “The breakthroughs that
PATH demonstrates here transcend style. Our goal is to show
that these concepts can be applied to all types of housing
to foster diversity and community.”
As the Concept Home exhibit explains, the utilities —
electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and communications — are
tangled together and buried behind finished interior walls
in the typical American home; a fact that makes home upgrades
both difficult and costly. A better approach is to separate
the three major home systems: the structure, the utilities,
and the floorplan. Disentangling the systems opens up new
possibilities for the floorplan, and for the maintenance and
upgrading of utilities. The Concept Home is designed to make
it easy to move walls and to access utilities, which might
be located in chases, raceways, and between ceilings and floors.
While the structure is built for long-term durability, utilities
and interior walls are configured to allow for the inevitable
changes in the lives of all homeowners, especially as we try
to keep up with advances in technology.
The Concept Home also champions the idea of standardized
measurements for building components, as well as increased
use of factory-built components, which offer greater precision
and improved quality control. These advances would make building
easier, faster, and more efficient. Homebuyers would enjoy
a bigger selection of home products at lower cost, and more
moderate home prices overall, while everyone would benefit
from less construction waste clogging landfills. Making the
PATH Concept Home a reality will require a team of willing
industry partners committed to collaborative problem solving
and investment in the future, and a home buying public who
sees the enormous promise of better homes and better communities…
and demands that they be built.
Several PATH partners sponsored the reception, including
NUCONSTEEL, CertainTeed Corporation, the North American Insulation
Manufacturers Association (NAIMA), and SEISCO/Microtherm,
Inc. All sponsoring partners complemented the Concept Home
model with their own educational technology displays, which
were available for viewing in the reception hall.
The Concept Home model went on display at the U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development in June and will be displayed
at several other venues throughout the year. To learn more
about the Concept Home, visit www.pathnet.org.
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