Jim Remlin is a Associate Principal at Sherwood and manages the Atlanta office. He specializes in the oversight and development of projects with goals focused on water management, improved site circulation, green infrastructure integration and utility routing. He has successfully supported projects from master-planning through construction documentation, bidding/negotiation and construction administration. In order to evaluate and achieve the clients’ goals and vision, Jim manages direct coordination with project architects, landscape architects and planners in addition to local and federal permitting agencies. Jim has worked on a wide array of project types in assorted land typologies, including institutional, open space, residential, and mixed-use developments located throughout the United States and internationally. These projects involve client and design team guidance and support to properly evaluate low impact design initiatives and strategies, identify ecological restoration opportunities and reach toward LEED and sustainable goals for the design of the site’s land and water footprint.

7group is a multi-disciplinary collective of leading built-environment professionals engaging projects that advance how technical innovation, community vitality, and ecological health entangle and co-evolve.

Sherwood Design Engineers is a civil engineering firm that applies innovation and elegant design to the creation and implementation of sustainable infrastructure. Our engineering process emerges from the integration of imagination, experience and collaboration to create beautiful infrastructure designed to enhance relationships between communities and the natural environment.

Architecturally structured pockets of air organized against north wall increasing insulation (effectively) on the side exposed to cold winter prevailing winds. In other words, closets, murphy beds, mechanical rooms, cabinets, bathroom, and even the vegetation on the exterior, all further protect and insulate the most thermally vulnerable exposure of the building. An Oxford study found that heavily vegetated building facades were not only an average of 15 degrees cooler in the Summer, but more surprisingly 10 degrees warmer in the winter!

Bringing both a passion for nourishing innovative, sustainable, and regenerative projects, and the capability to connect capital to worthy projects, John has been supporting the Ramboland project for several years, helping to strategize around the underlying financial dynamics amongst the housing, food, and energy systems.

Urban Water: see how water works in Cities and how it could - convert to 1-liner

The bathtub itself is a wheelchair-transfer walk-In tub with a fast fill Faucet, and massage jets. The orthopedic and quality of life benefits of this are clear. And like the pot-filler* in the kitchen space, flow-rate is irrelevant because you'll put the same amount of water into it regardless of how fast it gets there. Getting it there faster will also save a small amount of energy because less heat will be lost before use.

The bathtub is set up like a peninsula extending into the bathroom instead of with its long side against a wall as would be the typical way to place it in the room. This is so that care-givers can access the tub from any of 3 sides, including the one where the sink is. The opposite side is the one with the door for transfer. Not only will this be much easier to get in and out for someone reliant on a wheelchair, but it will also be a very easy transfer using the suspension system dolly**. There is also a floor drain on that side as well tied to the recirculating shower***.

Enabling this level of self care and care-giver ease is very rare, worth the additional financial cost. Most of us that are more mobile-able take for granted the luxury of being able to shower or take a bath, not only for convenience but the significant mental health benefits.

The fact that the water in this house will be unparalleled in terms of its purity also means that the steam generated in the bathroom will have far fewer contaminants, keeping the indoor air at a higher quality.

This is all both much safer, and being offered to folks that have largely been withheld from many folks with mobility challenges, because its just too dangerous for them and their care-givers to attempt a bath or shower, because they really only have consistent access to the non-accessible bathrooms that come with the apartments folks with mobility impairments reliant on state subsistent benefits can afford, like this image of Ron's current bathroom. Although there are programs for even rented property modifications, landlords often don't want this to happen, and/or the square footage and other architectural issues simply make a renovation cost-prohibitive.

ACCESSIBILITY PROGRESS
The passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was a watershed moment and has been critical to especially new buildings and infrastructure systems becoming more supportive to more levels and types of mobility. But the victory did seem to result in a waning of effort to keep making progress, especially with regard to considering other sorts of capability differences amongst our population. That said, in the last 10 or so years there have been many product innovations and a rekindling of the discussion about to move toward universal support of all humans, and even other living beings, in the design movement's discourse.

DONATION
Unless we get these systems donated for all needs, our plan is to demonstrate and test a variety each one of these features, and highlight them over time, sharing our findings in blogs, social media posts, and in our educational materials with local and worldwide education partners.
If you're a product manufacturer that wishes to donate your product for one or more unit or typology, and thus be highlighted in all future press and education about the project, you can contact us at the project email listed on the website. Likewise, if you'd like to sponsor one or the whole array of these innovations, feel free to contact us.

AUTOMATION
With the help of our accessibility automation and IOT advisor**** we will be tech-enabling as much of this as off-the-shelf AI assistants and IOT allows, but with manual operation overrides/alternatives whenever possible as well, for the sake user preferences and instances of system failure (power or connective loss).

Lead pipes, rough tap water to begin with, rain, stormwater, Karst soils

Ramboland is a universal design and community health demonstration project and living laboratory. This site is it's digital twin. It is, and always will be in a state of becoming, like it's real-world twin. The twin's will be increasing integrated with each other and into educational programs, through onsite sensors, data streams, bioregional digital twins, human reporting, and mixed reality and large-language-model (AI) interfaces. Among many other things these will spread the word about the higher possibilities for our built environments to produce living and economic value, and support the health and wealth generation of our most neglected and abused communities. Please, join team Rambo... integrate it into your learning and teaching, donate, explore, contact us, partner, and post about it!

After we had planned the building the mechanical room, closets, and a couple of other pockets of air up against the northern wall of the home (*), and with the cross ventilation designed in such a way that as air warms it is also pushed and pulled by prevailing windows out of the upper windows (**) above the mechanical room we were left with a challenge of how to cap the mechanical room. Leaving it open would expose the main living space to all the noise of the equipment in the mechanical room, and also eliminate the opportunity for that room function as a space in which air is pre-cooled in the Summer or pre-heated in the Winter by the equipment***, before being recycled into the space by a combination of the fresh air supply system and the high efficiency heat-pump above the bathroom****.

Indoor green roof moderates temperature and humidity, improves IEQ, IAQ in terms of ?, O2/CO2

*link to Passive Design 3 Tool-Tip
**link to Cross Ventilation Vignette
***link to HVAC pre-conditioning (not yet written)
****link to explanation of mechanical equipment

Introba is one of the world’s largest building engineering and consulting firms with more than 1,000 employees in offices across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Serbia, and Australia. Committed to reshaping the world, our problem solvers combine cutting-edge digital solutions with emerging innovations and industry-leading sustainability strategies to transform the built environment.

Goal: Operate within the sites natural energy budget, and produce a surplus of renewable energy to share with neighbors

Goal:
IAQ - Establish and maintain the cleanest possible indoor air whenever respirating animals are present

OAQ - Eliminate onsite production of other point sources of air pollutants, and cleanse the air meaningfully of SMOG, "unnatural" carbon emissions, and other human-made air contaminants.

Contribute meaningfully to the reduction of urban heat island effect.

Different U and SHGC on different sides, etc... operable panels instead on South? connection to wet-wall idea?

Since air conditioning (cooling) caught on in U.S. designers of our buildings have largely ignored the effects of sunlight and wind on them, and as an industry and culture we've mostly lost touch with ways of not only reducing unwanted heat gains in Summer and losses in Winter, but conversely also don't typically consider or know how to maximize the benefical inverse of these factors.

Surrounding massing of buildings, trees, topography, and other structures are of course also key considerations. If there is or even may eventually be a large mass that blocks the sunlight to the south of the building, the southern windows won't be able to catch direct sunlight to gain more heat in cold months.

Surrounding elements can also be used to great advantage also. For example trees that drop their leaves in cold months will let sunlight through to reach the buildings and heat them, while they're fully leafed out canopies create shade and cooler microclimates underneath them in the warmer months. This makes them a great contributor to energy efficiency when they are located to the south, east, and west of the building. Coniferous trees which maintain their vegetation year round are very helpful in blocking cold winds from the NW direction in the Winter, and hot sun to the east and west, and even the north near the Summer Solstice.

Urban Ecology:

Bat Boxes - Most people are skeptical about including support for bats in their in their local ecology. But then they learn what bats eat. Particularly since the Zika virus, Malaria mostly in other countries, and other mosquito born pathogens made their debut,
Google AI Overview
Bat boxes can be good for a variety of reasons, including:
Protecting your yard
Bats eat many types of insects, including mosquitoes, moths, and beetles, which can help keep your yard pest-free.
Providing a safe place for bats
Bat houses offer a safe place for bats to roost, especially when they're raising their young.
Helping bats survive
Bat populations are declining due to habitat loss, and bat houses can help provide a place for bats to roost that they might not otherwise find.
Helping the environment
Bats are important pollinators and seed dispersers, which can help plants grow in new areas.
Being fun to watch
Bats are fascinating to watch, especially during their nightly acrobatics.


Pollinator hotel

Vertical vegetation wall

Green roofs

Theresa Jordan is a graduate of Drexel University’s Urban Strategy masters program, with a concentration in community-based development and sustainable design. Her academic research focused on the regenerative potential of urban public space development. She has a background in business administration and human factors psychology.

In a healthy village...
children are not stuffed into boxes to learn things, or at least thats not the only or primary way learning happens. In a healthy village most of the youth's learning, and the most important sorts of learning, happen in community, and with several other generations. And they are likewise teaching their elders some things, regenerating the learnings and keeping the elders from settling to firmly into attitudes and positions.

The often adopted/appropriated concept of 7 generation thinking has been misunderstood by even well-intended descendents of settlers. It does not (just) mean thinking about the implications of our decisions on our descendents 7 generations in the future. Nor does it just mean we consider 3 behind us, our own, and 3 ahead of us, though apparently this is closer. Apparently it refers to the number of generations we should each encounter in our lifetime. When we're born we might be lucky enough to know great-grandparents and others from their generation; our elders' elders. But we may also live long enough and be lucky enough in other ways to meet our great-grandchildren. Tending to life-wisdom across 4 generations at any given moment creates resilience in that wisdom. Resilience unavailable when our elders are relegated to only being with each other, often in medical buildings they'd rather not be in, and our children's energy is pulled out of our community most waking hours, so they can learn, mostly data, and not how systems work or how to understand living systems, and step into their working.

We are going through ridiculous business model contortions and creativity in order to enable evolved approaches that not only allow a reintegration of our generations in western modernity, but also weave learning back into that shared-presence, and some technological and programmatic crutches for them to all step into co-learning about both the timeless systems, and rapidly evolving modern ones alike.

The washer/dryer unit is placed in the mechanical room for convenience, and shortens pipe length from treatment systems to all fixtures and appliances using treated rain for washing and irrigation. This will also slightly post/pre-heat return air before it is exhausted through an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) or cycled back into the house. This is also creating a warmer pocket of air on the northern wall, and is whats called "waste heat capture," which is good because Lancaster will remain a "heating load dominant" climate for at least the next couple of decades.

Many are economically trapped by circumstances they're born into, and programs designed to help are setup to disqualify individuals as they begin to succeed, but before they can survive independently of that support; many in low-income, redlined, and otherwise abused communities don't know anyone personally that significantly changed their lot in life. Celebrity exceptions are statistically absurd, and studies have shown a strong, present, stable adult deeply believing in you is a key to success, and some have that, and many don't. Many adults in abused communities are absent at least a lot of the daytime, often because they must hold more than one low-income job to provide for basic physical needs (food, energy, and housing). Experience has also shown us if a person does not personally know someone in a given profession or professional pathway, they simply will not believe it is possible for them to be in it. Experience is the only thing that can overcome these beliefs which are themselves ingrained as a result of an utter, multi-generational lack of that optimistic experience. Government programs are a non-starter for many in such circumstances, who still remember times in their family histories, sometimes not long ago, that filling out a form led to the abuse. As neighborhoods in these conditions begin to receive economic development its advocates suggest simplistically that it will benefit everyone. However, rising property prices also mean rising taxes and other living expenses, and existing residents are seldom formally included in the rising tide, held to the bottom by a short chain on their anchor. The cyclical diasporas of poor are moved around our cities as the churn of investment gnaws through the edges of "good" and "bad" neighborhoods - generally this poor-displacement occurs across the span of a few generations, and then repeats. But this isn't how it works everywhere, and our lost arts of "Villaging" are not gone altogether - there is a way to regenerate a people and their places, such that even more economic value is created, and actually for all. Beware, there is a huge amount of claims in this arena, but we are committed approaches in which unconcenting displacement driven by economic development is a DEAL-BREAKER, and Ramboland is the application of some of the most innovative ideas about how this could work differently.

Yep, centralized, loss-heavy, fragile, dirty, inequitable, unhealthy, dangerous...
Most of the food we eat, for those of us that have access to enough, is coming from far away; from mono-cropped land (land on which only one crop is grown, that is deader than deserts in many ways); bathed in petrochemicals to make up for the un-systemic, extractive methods of cultivation and the problems with pests and lack of nutrients it creates; tended by either massive machines or underpaid, desperate workers destroying their bodies by being hunched over all day, often just to send a few dollars back to poorer family in other countries; and about 40% of it is wasted either on the vine, or on the shelves, or somewhere in between; meanwhile huge populations go without sufficient access to healthy food, and we have simultaneous pandemics of obesity and hunger. Several of the species of plants being grown have been whittled down from numerous sub-species to only one or two, incredibly vulnerable to a single blight, and so heavily subsidized and relied upon that it could collapse our whole food system. And the animals involved are mostly treated like machines or plants, and live miserable, tortuously painful and short lives that resemble several levels of Dante's Hell, and are themselves extremely vulnerable to viruses and other infections and disease, and for that reason and to maximize their productivity are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, many of which make their way into our food and the water bodies via their excretions being washed by rainwater runoff into the water bodies from which we draw our drinking water.

It is centralized, loss-heavy, fragile, dirty, inequitable, inhumane, brutal, and maybe if that were all in the name of the economic thriving of the people that rely on it throughout that overall chain there would be some kind of argument for protecting our agriculture's current form from reform. But it is squeezing family and small businesses, and primarily benefitting already wealthy subsets of our population, and perhaps also some of the retirement plans of our hardworking citizens through pension funds on the stock market being tied up in the transnational corporations running most of it. But who would want their money in such a fragile and grim investment?

And what if it were all unnecessary, and a faster-than-we-think transition that left no one behind were possible? And what if that created far more overall wealth, security, and health for all species. We're not alone in not only believing in this, but testing it and proving it.

Food is at the core of the Yes-In-My-BackYard (YIMBY) program. Initially neighbors on the same block can opt for the backyard buy-in, giving them little stock in the shared entity, and giving the farming operation more area to cultivate ecologically rich food systems, where mostly dead "lawn" exists currently (mono-culture lawns are often less-alive that even deserts). Further stake/stock can be opted into with offers of labor and wall and roof surface area for additional eclogical food generation, and sun (energy) and water collection to continue to maintain and expand the surplus-producing water and energy "nanogrid" (smaller than a typical microgrid). [See YIMBY water, and YIMBY energy]

With the overhead costs of energy and water eliminated by onsite net-positive system surpluses, and to some extent labor supplied through educational partnerships, the cost of food production is significantly reduced. Through regenerative as well as technologically advanced (2 different things mind you) both food quality and quantity can be radically increased in close vicinity to where it is most needed. In partnership with DECA City Farms and others, the Glassmeyer Farm at Ramboland will be tied into an emerging net-work of urban food system nodes, providing not only nutritional resilience, but economic as well, through shared ownership models.

As with the more public living/dining/kitchen/guest room, we wanted the bedroom first to be optimal in terms of accessibility and health effects, then second efficient in terms of space. Like the more public side of the wall, this room must not only be a medically well-equipped but homey bedroom, it also must be an entertainment space, dressing area, and an exercise room. While we did some tricky things with convertible furniture in the more public room, but in this room we simply hung the entertainment system (TV, and HDMI streaming product, and a small soundbar with a great wireless headphone connection) from the roof/ceiling with some basic, inexpensive, but safe and strong hardware. We will likely add a single-sized murphy bed as well in case the queen sized one in the office nook is not sufficient for all the guests on a given night, or in the event that the caregiver needs to be in the same room for some overnights.

Pollinator Hotel under porch facing driveway. Bat boxes and bird houses. These are important to a healthy ecosystem and agriculture that doesn't require herbicides and pesticides.

Vertical vegetation wall

Green roofs

As with our split cooktop* our design team, including our accessible equipment advisor** have come up with an approach to some of the appliances which we think will increase accessibility for more folks. By placing two half height appliances together, one on top of and one under-mounted respectively to a section of height adjustable counter the full sized microwave and an oven (respectively) can both become highly accessible with minimum area consumed. The adjacent height adjustable sink (which uses flex hose to allow the fixture move) provides a pull-in beside the appliance regardless of their height. But when the counter is raised someone using a wheelchair could also pull in under the oven, and likely reach both appliances, but the oven easily. When the pair are lowered the whole way to a point at which the oven is on the floor, the microwave could be all the way down to under counter height, and easily accessed from the front, or by someone in a wheelchair who has pulled in beside it under the sink.

The sink will also have an additional metered faucet control. Metered faucets are those activated usually by pushing down a knob and which then run for a specific amount of time. The button or knob slowly pops up stopping water flow when it has returned to its deactivated original position. This metered control will not control a faucet that pours into this sink however. This is a manual backup for the irrigation system for the indoor green roof*** just beyond the top of the kitchen wall, which caps the mechanical room behind it. The primary irrigation system is described at the indoor green roof's own information dot****. The primary faucet will be a sensor activated basic kitchen faucet. We will likely also provide a typical sprayer that can also be held and activated by a button on the sprayer head.


ACCESSIBILITY PROGRESS
The passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was a watershed moment and has been critical to especially new buildings and infrastructure systems becoming more supportive to more levels and types of mobility. But the victory did seem to result in a waning of effort to keep making progress, especially with regard to considering other sorts of capability differences amongst our population. That said, in the last 10 or so years there have been many product innovations and a rekindling of the discussion about to move toward universal support of all humans, and even other living beings, in the design movement's discourse.

DONATION
Unless we get these systems donated for all needs, our plan is to demonstrate and test a variety each one of these features, and highlight them over time, sharing our findings in blogs, social media posts, and in our educational materials with local and worldwide education partners.
If you're a product manufacturer that wishes to donate your product for one or more unit or typology, and thus be highlighted in all future press and education about the project, you can contact us at the project email listed on the website. Likewise, if you'd like to sponsor one or the whole array of these innovations, feel free to contact us.

AUTOMATION
With the help of our accessibility automation and IOT advisor***** we will be tech-enabling as much of this as off-the-shelf AI assistants and IOT allows, but with manual operation overrides/alternatives whenever possible as well, for the sake user preferences and instances of system failure (power or connective loss).

And then of course there is the elephant in the bathroom – the toilet. Although we will not be going with a $6,000 Japanese toilet, we will be selected one with excellent geometry for caregiver and user ease, as well as either a built-in or bolt-on bidet and tushy dryer, which are becoming readily and affordably available in the market, and a great help to everyone involved.

Flushes greywater

"Japenese" toilet features like a bidet and dryer improve experience for both users and caregivers.

A custom designed pedal mechanism as a second option for flushing (which will simply pull down on the dual-flush flush-valve handle) improves hygiene when usable, by allowing hand contact with the fixture to be avoided. In some cases it will also improve accessibility when 1. a user has the ability to step on it but not otherwise operate a flush mechanism higher up, or 2. a user of a wheelchair can maneuver it to run over the pedal.

ACCESSIBILITY PROGRESS
The passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was a watershed moment and has been critical to especially new buildings and infrastructure systems becoming more supportive to more levels and types of mobility. But the victory did seem to result in a waning of effort to keep making progress, especially with regard to considering other sorts of capability differences amongst our population. That said, in the last 10 or so years there have been many product innovations and a rekindling of the discussion about to move toward universal support of all humans, and even other living beings, in the design movement's discourse.

DONATION
Unless we get these systems donated for all needs, our plan is to demonstrate and test a variety each one of these features, and highlight them over time, sharing our findings in blogs, social media posts, and in our educational materials with local and worldwide education partners.
If you're a product manufacturer that wishes to donate your product for one or more unit or typology, and thus be highlighted in all future press and education about the project, you can contact us at the project email listed on the website. Likewise, if you'd like to sponsor one or the whole array of these innovations, feel free to contact us.

AUTOMATION
With the help of our accessibility automation and IOT advisor**** we will be tech-enabling as much of this as off-the-shelf AI assistants and IOT allows, but with manual operation overrides/alternatives whenever possible as well, for the sake user preferences and instances of system failure (power or connective loss).

Erin's goal is to leave every place better than the way it was found, in both professional and personal life. While in college, Erin designed buildings that met the net zero energy standard and strived to achieve Living Building Challenge certification. Erin has a very strong passion for high performance buildings and believes architectural professionals play an important role in demanding and producing a more sustainable built environment. In this vein Erin worked for Habitat for Humanity in North Carolina, serving as a laborer and project manager who helped build 50 houses in just one year. Erin has been aspiring to live a zero waste and vegan lifestyle for over six years in an effort to reduce her ecological footprint as much as possible. Erin is leading the effort to produce the final permit documents for the Ramboland this year.

Urban Health:
Equity:
Flight:
Displacement:

A lifelong leader in education systems throughout Pennsylvania, and now leading educators to reinvent the education system itself via his role at Drexel University's Doctorate of Education program, John sees Ramboalnd as the important first example of the sort of community educational infrastructure we need in every neighborhood. He is thus working to integrate the project with curriculum and learning institutions locally and regionally.

A globally experienced leader with over 25 years of professional background in whole system thinking, ecological planning, and sustainable design, Chad is leading the farm business modeling for the projects.

“I believe that a resilient systems approach in our built environment – informed by the pattern and process of nature – will be an economically robust business model of the future. We must understand land and people as a positive relationship that enables them both to thrive in the future.”

Elizabeth W. Baldwin, P.E. is an experienced Senior Professional Engineer (P.E.) and Project Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the civil engineering industry. Elizabeth is a professional skilled in Stormwater Management Design and Implementation, Land Development, DEP Permitting, and Erosion Control. Elizabeth feels this project is an important contribution to the industry and regulations due to the ways in which it is future facing. She feels this project will be an example for development to come to show how combining site stormwater and water systems can be sustainable and beneficial for all.

The KnowYourH2O™ website and Path to Clean Water Program evolved from an initial blog and rather small website that focused on the private well owner and general drinking water issues in the early 1990s. It then took the form of the Water Research Center website from the late 1990s through the 2010s. The Water Research Center became part of the Carbon County Groundwater Guardian Program in 2001, which itself evolved into the 501c3 Keystone Clean Water Team in 2013.

Under the Water Research website we conducted research, training, and consulting projects in diverse areas. This included acid mine drainage (AMD), mine drainage, lake and stream monitoring, wetland creation and monitoring, drinking filtration plant performance evaluations, testing new point of use water treatment devices and systems, hydrogeological evaluations, geological investigations, soils testing, soil morphological evaluations, water well drilling, rehabilitation and construction, and land reclamation. During this period, we updated and expanded the Private Well Owner Outreach Program and developed a private well owner mail order water supply drinking water testing and education program.

Through our effort, we developed a number of programs such as the Private Well Owner and Drinking Water Testing Mail Order Water Testing Kits, Local Private Well Owner Test Programs, Our Drinking Water Guide for Well Water and City Water, and we worked and expanded the use of our Surface Water Quality Calculator and Citizen Science Outreach Efforts to the world.

We have been involved with Citizen Monitoring and other Environmental Training Programs for groups within the United States, Aruba, India, Arab Countries, Europe, and even the former Soviet Union and currently our Surface Water Monitoring Calculator is used worldwide and used as a training tool.

Over the years an incredible cast of pro-bono contributors have provided titanic support from every perspective; including Brian Oram, Brian Falcon, Tyler Stull, Heather Medlin, Jason Loiselle, Justin Bond, Tracy Buchholz, Scott Pusey, Tyler Thumma, Stull Investment / FLOW, Josie Plaut, CityCoHo, and more.

[in garage] Many crops can be simply upgraded with some labor. Canning, pickling, etc. can extend the shelf life of food, and increase the price it can fetch if sold.

Once upon a time, Ron Rambo had the idea to build a green demonstration project on his mother's land, and after talking about that around town to a couple of people, he was introduced to Max, a green building and regenerative practice leader who grew up near Ron's home. The two of them have been conspiring to make this project happen ever since.

Marcus has been an international leader in the green building movement and energy optimization for three decades. His passion for how things things can support and integrate with social and food systems, and via a regenerative approach, has attracted him to contributed in several ways to Ramboland. He is leading the team's efforts around food system partnerships. He's also passionate about working in his local community, and lives near the Ramboland site.

Starts, growth, upgrade, teach, eat

Greenhouse, raised beds, orchard, garage, vertical screens, indoor green roofs, outdoor green roofs, DECA, and beyond

Poverty, violence, community, diversity, co-morbidity

Air in cities is likely to continue to improve as internal combustion engineers become less common, and as downtown industrial sites continue to move out. But urban farming can add some risk or additional benefits.

As water changes phase from liquid to gas, when it reaches the right combination of temperature and relative humidity in the air around it, it absorbs a bit of additional energy from adjacent molecules. This causes a cooling effect, which is why we sweat too cool ourselves, and many other living beings do similar things. Its also why a forest always feels a bit cooler than less vegetated areas nearby; their canopies are actually usually hotter than a "natural" area without trees, but thanks to the shade and this evaporative cooling effect, the area under the canopy is often cooler, and generally vegetation has a cooling effect on an area. Swamp coolers also take advantage of this, spraying a mist into a space. They are among the simplest of active cooling systems, simply using a pump and a fan, and some water. Luckily most times of year we'll have more water than we need thanks to our large rainwater treatment and storage systems, and the projected increase in total annual water arriving in fewer, bigger rain events.

Kirby Smith and his wife Suria have led an innovative and practice-leading company, Sunkirb Ideas, for many years. Kirby is a technologist and innovator in connecting built-environment management systems with interfaces people with any level of ability can use to manage their spaces and systems. Kirby has been supporting Ron and Ramboland to help Ron in his current living situation, and maximize the independence yielded by the Ramboland design.

36" wide doors, per the requirements of ADA, are what we call barely legal. They're just good enough, not great. Someone relying on a wheelchair can easily still lose some knuckle skin going through a 36" wide door if they're self-propelling. Because they are so common, standard doorways have an economy of scale, and so they are cheaper than most other sizes. Despite this we felt it made sense to take a stand and specify 40" wide doors everywhere at Ramboland. Economies of scale only occur when something is legally standardized, or sell enough because of demand. Let's drive up demand for safer, better doors.

Recirculating shower saves 90% of energy and 85% of water compared to code. High-flow shower head for convenience and quality of life.

Many do not fully appreciate some of the luxuries and coping mechanisms we have in our society, nor realize that many don’t have safe or frequent access to them. For example, showers. In Ron’s current subsistence level living situation, it is unsafe to him or his caregivers for him to take a shower, so he relies mostly on sponge bathing, as do millions of others. Not only will Ron and other users have access to the full soaker tub with a door that allows his suspension system to carrying him easily in and out of it. The tub is positioned and mounted in such a way that caregivers can reach in from 3 of the 4 sides, a rare convenience. But he will also have a high-flow shower head next to the bathtub that he can enter in a wheelchair or the suspension system and enjoy a better shower experience than most of us have ever had. How does this comply with our other environmental goals? Well, the showering system we are installing is called a recirculating shower. Despite its high-flow rainforest showerhead, it saves almost 90% of both water and energy compared to a code compliant 2.5 gallon per minute showerhead. This is because unlike standard showers that lose all the water and heat within it after it passes over our bodies and down the drain only once, water in this system will recirculate about 7 times before being drained. This is possible because the shower has built-in treatment, filtration, and temperature regulators, which also ensure cleaner water than typical tap water and allow for a perfectly controlled water temperature, making them safer in terms of burns and cold shocks – a greater risk with users that have speech challenges.

ACCESSIBILITY PROGRESS
The passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was a watershed moment and has been critical to especially new buildings and infrastructure systems becoming more supportive to more levels and types of mobility. But the victory did seem to result in a waning of effort to keep making progress, especially with regard to considering other sorts of capability differences amongst our population. That said, in the last 10 or so years there have been many product innovations and a rekindling of the discussion about to move toward universal support of all humans, and even other living beings, in the design movement's discourse.

DONATION
Unless we get these systems donated for all needs, our plan is to demonstrate and test a variety each one of these features, and highlight them over time, sharing our findings in blogs, social media posts, and in our educational materials with local and worldwide education partners.
If you're a product manufacturer that wishes to donate your product for one or more unit or typology, and thus be highlighted in all future press and education about the project, you can contact us at the project email listed on the website. Likewise, if you'd like to sponsor one or the whole array of these innovations, feel free to contact us.

AUTOMATION
With the help of our accessibility automation and IOT advisor**** we will be tech-enabling as much of this as off-the-shelf AI assistants and IOT allows, but with manual operation overrides/alternatives whenever possible as well, for the sake user preferences and instances of system failure (power or connective loss).

This is a great example of the wacky, creative contortions we find ourselves in when we audaciously step into extremely aggressive goals with a world-class team, working from regenerative thinking and integrative principles. Several of these ideas fly directly in the face of longstanding environmental movement dogma, so we invite you to not reject or accept these ideas before really considering them in terms of their effects, and what paradigms and assumptions you are sitting in as you do so.

Research (get from Noah Zallen at Introba) and projects are indicating that energy microgrids can achieve "islandable" status and produce a far smaller surplus of energy if they have massive and dynamic storage in the form of EV's that are consistently connected to them via two-way chargers. We have wanted to provide a wheelchair modified EV as part of this project all along. Now it may have even more purpose.

This insight from one of our energy engineers (Noah Zallen at Introba) triggered a set of unexpected addtional ideas with one of our civil engineers (Jim Remlin with Sherwood Design Engineers). What if we helped our YIMBY program that expanded the systems approaches to neighbors's yards could jump across streets using the EV. What if instead of direct piping from neighbors' roofs to our cisterns, we placed rain barrels at YIMBY houses on other blocks in this and other low-income neighborhoods? It could be calculated based on rainfall and roof collection areas when those barrels would be full. The EV could bring an empty barrel, and swap it for the full one, and take that water to one of our partner's sites, DECA City Farms probably, where additional food production was occurring and there may be additional water needs, or just a preference rain with some extra goodies in it plants will like, and no chlorine they won't like. Having dropped off several full rain barrels the EV van with a liftgate would be empty and able to haul crops from the other farm to either locations where canning, jarring, pickling, etc could occur, or directly to a sales point or a free distribution point like a food bank, church, park, or community center.

This torque-intensive, low-milage journey is a perfect fit for the strengths of EV's, and it would likely return to its charger at Ramboland with a lot of remaining battery charge, which if it the nanogrid decided it made sense for economic or energy resilience reasons, could power the house or charge its batteries or those batteries placed in neighboring houses to prevent refrigerated food loss or medical device power loss during a blackout.

Likewise, the EV's could actually deliver charged batteries from energy surplus producing sites, to energy deficit suffering YIMBY partners as well.

Ramboland's Fiscal Agent and Program Manager.

Nexus emerged to enable system-change-makers to step into new levels of capability in creative new ways. We serve this purpose by tending to 1. under-supported projects, 2. the evolution of how education works in our society, and 3. the communities intertwined with both. We believe these all need one another in order to be regenerated.

Our programs are all intended to serve that purpose in different ways, each entering into the whole system made up of those 3 parts, and driving their co-evolution from a different entry point.

converting that to food and even coolling... instead of just warming

Since 1996, we have provided a wide range of Engineering and Landscape Architecture solutions to both the private and public sectors, from our corporate headquarters in Lititz, PA, our Central PA office in State College, PA, and our Western PA office in Butler, PA.

Through our collaborative project approach, we combine the design nature of our Landscape Architects and the scientific nature of our Engineers to yield project solutions that are innovatively conceived, creatively designed, and technically sound.

100% Employee Owned Company (ESOP)

It all began with Anna…and Mary Poppins. In 1965, we were inspired by the touching story of a young girl named Anna who was unable to attend a local theater showing of Mary Poppins with the other children because she was in a wheelchair. From this inspiration was born United Cerebral Palsy of Lancaster County. In 2000, we became United Disabilities Services (UDS) — a new name to reflect our greatly-expanded capabilities.

The UDS Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Lancaster, PA, committed to helping seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities lead more independent and fulfilling lives. In our 55-plus years, we’ve developed a wide variety of services and programs that improve quality of life and expand boundaries.

Today, over 350 caring, dedicated employees proudly serve people with disabilities and the aging in 40 counties across Pennsylvania. We provided services to more than 6,000 people last year alone, enabling them to live happier, more independent lives where they’re more in control of the decisions that affect them.

Our foundation is based on a strong vision, mission and core values.

We have the utmost respect and admiration for educators, and several of us have specific educators from the Lancaster area we credit with being fundamental to the directions we took in life. Many of them would say that the system is working, or at least not well enough. And a lot of that has to do with the fact it is stuck in a few structures and principles that are not conducive to evoking the essence and potential of learners (what education should really be about, as opposed to cramming data into skulls). In addition to this data obsession, we are also stuck in idea that we should remove learners from their systems, stuff them in buildings, pull apart the systems in the abstract; as opposed to embedding learning how to interact and be a part of the systems of our communities while we engage in their health. We are pulling the energy of our young and others out of the systems that need that energy the most, and attempting to indoctrinate them to use automated "thoughting" rather than increase thinking prowess and capacity. The primary instruments of these education systems are pat memorization, enclosure & fragmentation / reductive methods, and with obedience as a prerequisite for being able to impose this.

The kitchen will be a demonstration both of the best accessibility products and creative ways of arranging them to maximize their usability for as many users as possible; products like pull-down upper cabinets, height adjustable counters, sink, and appliances, and a wheelchair pull-in space between all of them, as well as space to add an upper refrigeration unit should Ron or other visitors or residents wish it to be available to those that can reach those higher levels. The induction cooktop will be embedded in the height adjustable island, with prep space between the two pairs of burners to improve usability by those preparing foods from a wheelchair, minimizing the need maneuver the chair repeatedly while moving food and cookware onto and off of the safe induction heat surfaces.

ACCESSIBILITY PROGRESS
The passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was a watershed moment and has been critical to especially new buildings and infrastructure systems becoming more supportive to more levels and types of mobility. But the victory did seem to result in a waning of effort to keep making progress, especially with regard to considering other sorts of capability differences amongst our population. That said, in the last 10 or so years there have been many product innovations and a rekindling of the discussion about to move toward universal support of all humans, and even other living beings, in the design movement's discourse.

DONATION
Unless we get these systems donated for all needs, our plan is to demonstrate and test a variety each one of these features, and highlight them over time, sharing our findings in blogs, social media posts, and in our educational materials with local and worldwide education partners.
If you're a product manufacturer that wishes to donate your product for one or more unit or typology, and thus be highlighted in all future press and education about the project, you can contact us at the project email listed on the website. Likewise, if you'd like to sponsor one or the whole array of these innovations, feel free to contact us.

AUTOMATION
With the help of our accessibility automation and IOT advisor*** we will be tech-enabling as much of this as off-the-shelf AI assistants and IOT allows, but with manual operation overrides/alternatives whenever possible as well, for the sake user preferences and instances of system failure (power or connective loss).

Triple Pane Windows minimize energy losses through the envelope, compared to code minimum windows. Our Tilt-turn windows also seal better than more traditional double-hung windows, and allow us to open windows facing downward to pull in prevailing windows from the south in shoulder seasons, and release it upward through windows that open up on the north wall, as warming air passes through space during cross-ventilation.

Windows on south side allow high levels of solar heat gain because window sills, headers, and roof overhang relative geometries ensure the sun only reaches these windows in cold months, when we want the heat gain. In those months the sun angles are lower, and can get under the roof overhang to pass into the house and assist with heating it, reducing the burden on the mechanical heating systems. These windows still have a very low U-value to insulate well, however. Conversely, windows on the other 3 sides have both low U-values (insulate well) and low SCGC (Solar Heat Gain Coefficient), so they reject solar heat gain in the warmer months when we can't prevent the sun from reaching them. However the house has also be shaped and origented such that we have far more southern exposure than east or west, because again, the southern exposure doesn't recieve heat gain the warm months, and does in the cold months. Conversely the minimized east and west wall sizes do the opposite of what you want them to; they gain heat in the Summer and don't in the winter, because the Sun rises farther northeast of the house and has more time to bombard the eastern side of the house in the Summer, and likewise spends more time bombarding the western side of the house as it sets, which is also generally when the ambient temperatures are highest (afternoon).

At DBC Partners, LLC we’re passionate about securing the necessary funding so building projects in targeted neighborhoods and key areas can be completed. To do this, we focus on Debt/Equity and Joint Venture Partnerships, working with BIPOC developers on projects in underserved neighborhoods that, when completed, will create a significant upside to the communities in which they’re located. All debt is secured via Greenbriar Capital, LLC (Philadelphia, PA) who specializes in debt for operating companies and real estate transactions by providing commercial mortgages and loans. Although many project sponsors (the borrowers) have 85-90% of the equity required to complete a project, they still lack the remaining 10-15% (ranging from $500K to $10MM). That’s where we at DBC come in, supplementing the remaining amount needed so projects can be fully funded.

We believe that we're impacted by the built environment, and we aim to improve that relationship. Whether a project is big or small – a stairway or a stool, a dwelling or a door – great building starts with great design. Our goal is to enhance all spaces and interactions through purposeful structure and finely crafted detail.



Founders Mike Stoner and Jesse Pellman, LEED® AP began with a vision to create better housing based on the principals that for something to last, it must be well-loved, and that all we do should carry the awareness that our actions reverberate throughout our broader community.



We believe that sustainability goes beyond the individual spaces and things we build, restore, and renovate. This core ideology is why we’ve recently become a Certified B Corporation. Relationships are at the heart of our business, and the center of what we do. Whether it’s with a client, co-worker, architect, artisan, our neighbor or our environment, we’re always more interested in developing a relationship than a contract. So we’ve worked hard to cultivate a unique and comprehensive understanding of high performance, healthy, and sustainable housing.



We feel fortunate to have been joined by some great friends and makers along the way who help to further the mission of crafting sustainability.

All of the H2O on Earth would only comprise a water droplet 862 miles in diameter if were gathered at 1 atmosphere of pressure

John is a green architecture movement leader and pioneer, focused solely on regenerative thinking and approaches. Ramboland represents one of the only projects with enough merit to keep John from fully retiring. John is supporting the project by seeing it through the final design and permitting phases of the house and initial.

ECOVIE designs and delivers high performance scalable systems and products for on-site water management. Our focus is on grey water recycling NSF 350 (C), rainwater collection and storm water management. We offer the only grey water recycling system with NSF 350 (C) certification.

At ECOVIE, we work collaboratively with architects and engineers to provide innovative on-site water management solutions. Our passion for water and technology drives everything we do.... Integral/Introba, Tesla, Glumac, etc.

In a healthy village...
resources are not taken for granted. Let alone contaminated and cast aside. The combination of having plenty of energy (whatever forms that takes, elbow grease, flowing water, solar radiation, the heat of the Earth herself) and the awareness of the water demands of the maximized healthy abundance in the hyper-local biome, makes the water falling out of the sky any obvious connector. Not only that, the familiarity with how that ecosystem relates to the hydrology, above and below, clues the citizens into the idea that rain does not skip right to the surface water bodies. The living beings take up huge amounts of it, use it for biological processes, often several, before releasing mostly vertically, through infiltration and evaporation/evapotranspiration. What if our built-infrastructures did this as well. What if we When significant storage capacity is introduced, not only is there enough water for all the biological processes in many parts of our country. There are also ways to release the water when it is in excess of needs, and without damaging systems and their members downstream.

When goals like "capture all rain, and use it multiple times on site" and "only release water vertically unless its in living being's body (mostly animals and plants that have consumed it)"

Well-intended (pun) green building principles, like reduce water use, fall away because those are based on an intention of minutely reducing the contribution to the harm of the centralized municipal water systems. In the approaches explored here there are moments in the year that more water must be used to keep the hydrologic processes in balance.

Air quality in western modernity has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Before the industrial revolution humanity had seldom (though certainly not never) produced a concentrated pollutant source consistently enough to create lasting outdoor or even indoor air quality threats or problems. Cities became incredibly polluted in the early and mid stages of industrialization, so much so that those that could live outside of them did so. Regulation and other factors that moved industry out of urban centers from urban poor, to rural poor areas, essentially diluted the contamination enough that it became somewhat less severe issues for broader areas. The Clean Air Act and its sibling Clean Water Act substantially reduced the negative impacts of industry, which had been radically disproportionately impacting poor and non-human living beings. Regulation and enforcement have continued to struggle to keep up with the propagation of new sorts of industries and their new contaminates, and other factors like corporate lobbying and politicians susceptible to it have hindered their effectiveness. But generally the arc of outdoor air quality over nearly the last century and half has been mostly a trend in the healthier direction, with ozone loss for a time, and throughout the century greenhouse gas emissions as indirect health impacts of air contamination steadily rising.

In mid to late stages of industrialization our industries were producing new chemicals for household and other products at a rate well beyond what testing, medical and health analysis could keep pace with. Fashion trends in architecture and interior design at times exacerbated this, while health and green building rating systems at least pointed the way to often cost-effective avoidance of indoor health threats from products and materials, albeit without really moving the bell-curve of building industry practice all that much. It would be fair to say that have substantially impacted product and material manufacturing, leveraging the PR and marketing motives of building product manufacturers, though greenwashing still runs rampant. Much of these efforts fall short of proper prioritization and accurate technical considerations however, and the air chemistry being brought to bear on Ramboland is rarified air, both literally and figuratively (sorry, couldn't resist).

By 1. maintaining a simple material palette, 2. maximizing material reuse, 3. being highly critical of chemical content in all products and materials selected, 4. resorting to new materials only when necessary and via local and scientifically validated and/or certified content, as well as 5. introducing filtration and other treatment within rooms and sometimes within HVAC systems (whichever is more effective in terms of air quality, and often also hard costs, and addressing other air quality issues like temperature and humidity as well) Ramboland will have amongst the most pristine air of any building. This 'optimization sequence' ensures maximum performance and minimal cost. Ongoing air quality testing will add insight and prompt responses to air quality impacts materials and products introduced by occupants (clothes, accessories, food, and other belongings) as well as activities like cooking, bathing, cleaning, and respirating, further strides will be made in controlling for and maintaining super healthy air quality beyond design and construction stages, in a way that can be accessed by education systems and the public at large.

Carol Hickey stepped forward first to serve as architect of record, and lead the architectural efforts during the project's schematic design phases. She's an ardent supporter and fan of Ron and the project, and has integrated it into her architecture education offereings and F&M University.

Look and feel - spa-like, simple materials palette, light, clean,



Finally, we will place grab bars throughout the space, more than are required, because again, caregivers often rely on them also, and not everyone will always necessarily have access to the suspension system will be providing.


ACCESSIBILITY PROGRESS
The passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was a watershed moment and has been critical to especially new buildings and infrastructure systems becoming more supportive to more levels and types of mobility. But the victory did seem to result in a waning of effort to keep making progress, especially with regard to considering other sorts of capability differences amongst our population. That said, in the last 10 or so years there have been many product innovations and a rekindling of the discussion about to move toward universal support of all humans, and even other living beings, in the design movement's discourse.

DONATION
Unless we get these systems donated for all needs, our plan is to demonstrate and test a variety each one of these features, and highlight them over time, sharing our findings in blogs, social media posts, and in our educational materials with local and worldwide education partners.
If you're a product manufacturer that wishes to donate your product for one or more unit or typology, and thus be highlighted in all future press and education about the project, you can contact us at the project email listed on the website. Likewise, if you'd like to sponsor one or the whole array of these innovations, feel free to contact us.

AUTOMATION
With the help of our accessibility automation and IOT advisor**** we will be tech-enabling as much of this as off-the-shelf AI assistants and IOT allows, but with manual operation overrides/alternatives whenever possible as well, for the sake user preferences and instances of system failure (power or connective loss).

Storage can be a serious challenge in spaces with high levels of mobility accessibility. Limitations on what can be reached by various folks is not only limited, but often mutually exclusive. I.e. some folks can't reach things down low easily, others can't reach things up high, both for various reasons. Universal Design is an aspiration, a north start that perhaps can never truly be reached, but it can get us a lot of progress in checking ourselves against it, and repeatedly asking "how can we make this better for more people?"

The kitchen at Ramboland is packed with examples of this, one of our favorites being the pull-down cabinets. There are several versions of this on the market; some allow you to pull the "guts" of the cabinet straight down out of the bottom of the cabinet carcass (that's what they call the outer enclosure of cabinets), so that the bottommost shelf in an upper cabinet can be the whole down at counter height, or perhaps even lower if the counter itself can also drop. Others allow those guts to both come down and forward. Still others bring the entire carcass and it's guts the whole way down and to the front edge of the counter.

ACCESSIBILITY PROGRESS
The passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was a watershed moment and has been critical to especially new buildings and infrastructure systems becoming more supportive to more levels and types of mobility. But the victory did seem to result in a waning of effort to keep making progress, especially with regard to considering other sorts of capability differences amongst our population. That said, in the last 10 or so years there have been many product innovations and a rekindling of the discussion about to move toward universal support of all humans, and even other living beings, in the design movement's discourse.

DONATION
Unless we get these systems donated for all needs, our plan is to demonstrate and test a variety each one of these features, and highlight them over time, sharing our findings in blogs, social media posts, and in our educational materials with local and worldwide education partners.
If you're a product manufacturer that wishes to donate your product for one or more unit or typology, and thus be highlighted in all future press and education about the project, you can contact us at the project email listed on the website. Likewise, if you'd like to sponsor one or the whole array of these innovations, feel free to contact us.

AUTOMATION
With the help of our accessibility automation and IOT advisor*** we will be tech-enabling as much of this as off-the-shelf AI assistants and IOT allows, but with manual operation overrides/alternatives whenever possible as well, for the sake user preferences and instances of system failure (power or connective loss).

Centralized, loss-heavy, fragile, dirty, inequitable, unhealthy, dangerous...
Hubs we call power-plants are a few vulnerable dots on the map, struggling to keep the entire cardiovascular-like system of the energy grid glowing despite huge swings in production and demand, and the increasingly frequent natural disasters. For the most part these strained juggernauts either belch out toxic emissions, and/or emissions that are already beginning to skew the balances of our current biosphere, or they are producing types of waste that will remain a threat to a life longer than any of our current languages have been used on Earth - so creating signage to warn of the peril they present is next to impossible.

The desperate or vengeful have singular nodes in the mostly dirty and dangerous power-plants they can attack to threaten so many at once. Not only huge regions, but the region supported by each juggernaut is limited in its ability to support any others, unless we're lucky enough for the disruptions in one to align with moderate or low stressed in nearly all the others.

These juggernauts, and the technology they are based upon enabled incredible progress, and luxury, and wealth. And if that arc is to continue we must adapt the system, to allow the juggernauts to retire in honor, for the workers that support them to be honored and thanked, and supported in their transition to other roles. The surpluses of the new pattern can allow this to happen.

The house is oriented to optimize sun angles penetrating or not depending on time of year and day*. But the house is also designed to account for prevailing winds.

"Prevailing winds" is a term for the direction wind tends to come from, and in this climate they have tended to come from the Northwest in the Winter (when we don't generally want to be hit by cold air), and the Southwest in the Summer (when we often can benefit from some cross-ventilation and cooling).

So the house is designed with blocking the northwesterly cold winter prevailing winds in mind, with additional layers of vegetation, insulation, walls, trees, and pockets of air**.

Likewise, the house is designed to scoop up the southwesterly winds in warmer months, so when the temperature is within certain ranges the windows can be opened, and the movement of the air can create whats called "expanded thermal comfort." This is a term for the effect of more air molecules hitting your skin and absorbing some heat from it thanks to the air moving. This increases the rate the body can release heat energy, and thus requires the air to be less cool than when it's not moving as much. Ceiling fans also offer this benefit but use up some electricity to do so (though less than air conditioning).

When early on in our design process the addition of a greenhouse was being considered, we were concerned this might jeopardize our cross ventilation because the greenhouse would block some of that southwesterly winds in some of the warmer months of the year. So we did a type of analysis called Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). This technology has been used for a longer period in automobile and aeronautical engineering and design so that cars and planes could be made more aerodynamic. The old fashioned way to do it is to place a model of the geometry of the object being designed in a wind tunnel (literally a room with fans at both ends to create high air speed in one direction), and then smoke being blown blowing in the fan so that the airflow is visible to the observers. CFD software allows us to assess our design in a virtual model without building a physical one yet.

Somewhat to our surprise, the introduction of the greenhouse created whats called a Venturi Effect. This is the phenomenon in which sending a fluid (usually air) through a compressed space causes it to speed up, like a nozzle on a hose, or the tapered or fluted cooling towers and smoke stacks on factories and combustion-based power plants. The breezeway between the house and the greenhouse is angled enough towards the prevailing southwesterly winds, that it captures enough wind and compresses, that that wind is actually accelerated into the house a little bit more than if the greenhouse weren't there.

Using CFD created a lot more confidence that we could not only add the additional complexity of a diverse and high tech food system to the project without sacrificing other performance goals, but in fact enhanced our achievement of those goals. The house will actually be able to use active, electricity consuming air conditioning a little bit less, because our breezeway pushes the air a little bit faster into the south-facing windows in house. As the air inside heats up a bit from contact with warm human bodies and other heat sources inside the house, this will actually help it rise a bit and then more effectively be sucked out of the high-up windows on the north wall of the house. The CFD allowed us to do a lot better than the typical "wishful thinking arrows" designers so often use to represent how they hope the air will flow!

Split, height adjustable mobile island maximizes use of space, surface activity utilization and accessibility. In order to maximize human mobility in the space we have used up a lot of extra square footage for clearance for wheelchairs, etc. This is a bit at odds with our intentions around material and energy use efficiency, because the greater space requires a larger envelope, and that also yields a greater volume of air. Together these increase both the embodied energy and energy use during its occupancy and useful life, to run mechanical systems to supplement our passive designs, to keep the air comfortable and healthy. So, we had some making up to do by optimizing space. We sought to make both of the main rooms in the house as multi-purposeful as possible.

This one piece of furniture will allow the room to function as a large kitchen, a generous dining room, a spacious living room, a social space, and often any desired combination of these. Not only is this much more convenient and "universal." but it also helps offset the extra square footage and clearances included for mobility improvements.

ACCESSIBILITY PROGRESS
The passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was a watershed moment and has been critical to especially new buildings and infrastructure systems becoming more supportive to more levels and types of mobility. But the victory did seem to result in a waning of effort to keep making progress, especially with regard to considering other sorts of capability differences amongst our population. That said, in the last 10 or so years there have been many product innovations and a rekindling of the discussion about to move toward universal support of all humans, and even other living beings, in the design movement's discourse.

DONATION
Unless we get these systems donated for all needs, our plan is to demonstrate and test a variety each one of these features, and highlight them over time, sharing our findings in blogs, social media posts, and in our educational materials with local and worldwide education partners.
If you're a product manufacturer that wishes to donate your product for one or more unit or typology, and thus be highlighted in all future press and education about the project, you can contact us at the project email listed on the website. Likewise, if you'd like to sponsor one or the whole array of these innovations, feel free to contact us.

AUTOMATION
With the help of our accessibility automation and IOT advisor**** we will be tech-enabling as much of this as off-the-shelf AI assistants and IOT allows, but with manual operation overrides/alternatives whenever possible as well, for the sake user preferences and instances of system failure (power or connective loss).

Altogether now: centralized, loss-heavy, fragile, dirty, inequitable, unhealthy, dangerous...
Our power-plants and factories dump heat and toxins into water bodies, joined by hormones and pharmaceuticals from run-off from our farmland, and drawn into our water treatment plants which cannot remove all of these health threats. Our cities assure our citizens "the levels of hexavalent chromium (and a bunch of other stuff) are below EPA limits," but the recommended dosage if your doctor hasn't prescribed the pharmaceuticals at least, is zero. And the test results are at the treatment plants, while many old buildings and infrastructure, predominantly in poor neighborhoods, schools, and homes, contain additional contaminants like lead (because they haven't been updated in decades), so our most vulnerable and underserved are once again getting the worst version of the most basic resources.

Not to mention that the incredible amounts of energy that create a level of pressure in the system needed to drive flow to all our fixtures, is also both responsible and challenged by the MASSIVE losses to leakage throughout the distribution system. Other than the impacts of the energy use and the production it demands, this might one of the greatest virtues of this system, because it helps to recharge the aquifers that would otherwise be nearly completely cutoff from incoming water due to our the excessive amount of impervious surfaces in our cities - we nearly fully cap the land with hardscape.

We then contaminate all of the water we use, and send it back into the water bodies from whence it came, often without further treatment when rain overwhelms our combined sewer and stormwater systems and outflows into these natural water bodies. Then a town downstream pulls it back in to do it again. From a certain perspective, an alien one for example, it might almost seem like the purpose of the system was to contaminate the natural water bodies, and hurt the living beings throughout the system.

This was not done intentionally, and it is largely a function of unforeseen developments in our societies' growth in both size and industrialization. But it is also now a function of its human operators opposing bigger systemic shifts, and insisting on relegating coping with it to incremental bandaid solutions, to one problem at a time, usually addressed by a single technology or technique (often yet another chemical, or energy intensifying form of filtration or treatment).

All the while much cleaner water, at least in some respects, is falling on us from the sky fairly regularly in many parts of the country. We increasingly have more water than we can handle falling out of the sky some times of year, and not enough in others... if only there were a way to take the excess water from the deluges and save it for the droughts! This water has smog, bird poop, pollen, dust, etc. in it, all of which should be removed for human consumption, but that is much easier. And some of that is better to leave in for irrigation water. Whether you treat rain like the sacred, valuable resource it is, or like its a nuisance, it will be self-fulfilling prophecy. Stormwater is essentially a curse-word for rain or run-off that would not happen if we hadn't paved over almost everything.

The irony of this ignored resource literally hitting us in the face while we complain about it, and take it from what is now probably the worst stage in the same hydrologic cycle is something that can't be unseen once realized.

And again, when you sit down to pencil the math on whether blocks or districts could meet their own water needs, especially if that is tied into food systems and nano-/micro-grids producing a surplus of energy, it starts to become clear that our failure to design a compassionate and effective transition from our disastrous current approaches is the primary problem.