Students design and build new homes for Navajo families | SmartPlanet | The Architecture of the City | Scoop.it
More than 2.4 million Native Americans live on or close to tribal reservations, and over forty percent live in dilapidated or overcrowded housing where basic conveniences like water, power and plumbing are often severely insufficient.

A educational nonprofit based in Utah is taking the principles of design-build, where designers are involved in construction, to address the situation of housing on the Navajo reservation that straddles Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

DesignBuildBluff (DBB) gives architecture students at the University of Colorado and the University of Utah the opportunity to design and build new homes for Navajo families living in Bluff, Utah.

The students do all of the design work for a specific family, and the same students that do the designing do the building (hence the design-build name). The designs must focus on sustainability, and the houses must be 1000 square feet or less...


Via Lauren Moss