Social Experiment
The Power House will serve a dual purpose to produce educate and sustain the best aspects of the Detroit neighborhood while at the same time providing a location for visitors to interact with the neighbors and the neighbors to interact with visitors, specifically artists and musicians. The Power House is a magnet for gathering resources, energy, social ideas and change.
Each move we make to the house is thought of as a performance in that the house is situated in a highly visible location and has no trouble in attracting an audience and help from the immediate neighbors. Each action is an unusual and complex move, not within the norm of what is a familiar way to build, renovate or garden. This is intentional for two reasons: [1] We are attempting to develop a way of renovating with as little money as possible by using resources that are unique to our contemporary life such as the internet, renewable energy an old pick up truck and help from local skilled and unskilled workers. [2] We would like to prove that you can renovate old Detroit houses cheaply, but with even more quality, efficiency and functional as well aesthetic design than if you simply bought all the raw materials from a big box store, hired a professional crew and finished the project in a week. This however is a slow process.
Time is slow, but of the essence. By slowing the time we increase the opportunities of finding the right materials for the right price and the right people for the right job, but most important having the most fun while we meet the most people.
Long term goal
The first Power House structure is a typical foreclosed two bedroom working class Detroit house. Rather than view this and other vacant properties as a drain on the tax base, bank holdings, and the local economics of lowered property values, Power House flips this notion of financial strain to one of community asset. Power House seeks to create a network of mini-power stations from vacant properties by outfitting houses with 'green' energy sources - wind, solar, biomass - thus creating localized networks of sustainable power, creating a strong sence of place and empowerment.
Each Power House would be capable of creating enough energy for its own consumption and produce enough excess power for at least one neighboring home. This is feasible due to the extremely low cost of purchasing property in Detroit and the amount of available small single family vacant homes in Detroit. A certain percentage of each Power House would also function as neighborhood hubs by producing not only electricity but also a new point of identity, gathering place of creative exchange, thus a new type of neighborhood where undesirable homes become experimental factories for community action and power.
Who
The Power House was started by the dynamic Design 99 duo Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope in March of 2008 with the purchase of one house and two empty lots totaling $4,900.
Currently we are in the process of bringing other artists in to help set up a small neighborhood radio station and sculpted landscape work.
Source: Power House Project.
