Work Worth Doing is an interdisciplinary design studio working to understand the intersection of design, society, and the environment. They’ve been working on retrofitting wartime homes with sustainable design and technologies, getting them down to zero energy use through affordable practices. This model would be a no-brainer for any city, but particular Windsor, which has a huge number of neighbourhoods scattered with wartime bungalows. It’s also similar to the Green Corridor’s Ecohouse initiative, which is still underway.
Oh, and by the way, this is happening in Windsor.
The Windsor Essex Community Housing Corporation has 125 wartime homes in their portfolio of social housing. The Now House Project team is working with Windsor Essex CHC to design the retrofit of five houses in their portfolio to net zero energy use and greatly reduced operating costs. The houses would serve as demonstrations for the possible retrofit of the other wartime homes in the portfolio. Work Worth Doing is the head consultant on this project in Windsor, which will also involve St. Clair College students, and maybe also University of Windsor students.
How do I selfishly get my house nominated for this retro-fitting?
So awesome.
Did you hear about Rino’s idea to go on a field trip to Power House in Detroit?
Sometime soon.
You in?
I’m going to try to keep my eye on this project, as it moves forward, I think there will be a lot of things that could be easily transitioned towards upgrading people’s houses incrementally, rather than one big gut-job. I really think this is the model we should look towards for nearly all sustainability initiatives… what do we have around us, how can we make it better, and then how can we do that more efficiently?
Also, yes, Rino mentioned this proposed field trip, I’m totally in!!!