Current Work

---

REE House Project

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Resource & Energy Efficiency (REE) Housing Model Design

The City of Milwaukee boards up and/or tears down some 400 structures every year. The REE Project aims to use materials from those houses to build new, affordable, sustainable housing in a central city area of Milwaukee. After decades of neglect, these neighborhoods are liberally sprinkled with abandoned houses which contain a wealth of materials when properly dismantled.

We have completed designs for three models:

1. a modest one-family home (shown here, called "The Raised Bungalow") that has a lower level which can be finished off inside as the family grows
2. an up-down duplex ("The New Milwaukee Two-Flat") which is not unlike those still found by the thousands in Milwaukee's mature neighborhoods.
3. a just-completed design has been dubbed "The New Four-Square", a single-family two-story model that has enough bulk to feel appropriate on Milwaukee's older blocks. It is currently nearing completion of construction.

The REE House Project, with support from The Energy Center of Wisconsin, is creating jobs by training workers to dismantle the old houses, and then to build new energy-efficient homes using salvaged and recycled materials.

REE House Inc. was nominated for a 2000 HUD Best Practices award. For the PATH report on deconstruction, their study of this project and three others around the nation, see http://www.huduser.org/publications/destech/deconstruct.html

Design Coalition is collaborating on this project with Lou's firm Host-Jablonski Architects. Consulting are Steve Loken of the Center for Resourceful Technology in Montana, and Welford Sanders and Stan Wrezki of the UW-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

back to Current Work list

---

Home | Contents | Current Work | Feature Articles | Projects | Community | Publications | Contacts

---

© 1995-2000 Design Coalition, Inc. , Madison, WI, USA ~~ contact@designcoalition.org Last modified: 10 Sep 01