The future of design is in all our hands
Suzanne Batchelor interviews Marlon Blackwell May 14th, 2007
Architecture for Humanity invited Blackwell and 14 other architects to submit designs to re-house Biloxi, Mississippi residents left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.
Marlon Blackwell, architect and professor designed the Porchdog home for Hurricane Katrina survivors in Biloxi, Mississippi and posted the design on the Open Architecture Network. The award-winning designer and professor got his undergrad degree at Auburn University, where he met Samuel Mockbee (Rural Studio), who became, Blackwell says, a lifelong friend and "spiritual mentor."
To meet new FEMA guidelines for the site, Blackwell designed a home 12 feet off the ground that still offers a stoop and a porch. It's breezy, sustainable, low-cost and tough as steel.
Biloxi's Tyler family (a father and two sons) then chose the Porchdog design for their new home.
The Porchdog is posted at Open Architecture Network under a Creative Commons license here, available for building around the world in other challenging coastal areas.
Blackwell, working with his firm's three other architects, designed the Porchdog home to provide an affordable, hurricane and storm surge-resistant home that meets new FEMA regulations for housing in the Hurricane Katrina disaster area. Biloxi's Tyler family chose the Porchdog design for their family's new home, the first Porchdog to be built.
The Porchdog home is one of six designs selected by Architecture for Humanity for presentation to the those choosing to re-build in the aftermath of Katrina.
Suzanne Batchelor: Has the Porchdog been built yet?
Marlon Blackwell: It's not built yet, but it's starting construction in the next couple of weeks. We’re finishing up the working drawings.
Q. And funds for building the home have come from FEMA?
A: It was funded by the Angel Network.
Q: As part of Katrina relief?
A: Yes, Architecture for Humanity is the organization. They invited 15 architects to propose prototypes for Biloxi, the only Gulf Coast city that rejected the New Urbanist designs on their city--which I would applaud on a certain level. So, in lieu of that, how about some prototypes? And to solve problems of how to deal with the new FEMA regulations.
