People
- Leslie Lawrence was one of the first people I consulted. In the process of building her own chemically safe home, she's become extremely well-informed about non-toxic materials.
- Jay Shafer, founder of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, and now Four Lights Tiny House Company also consulted with me, and I attended one of his design workshops early on.
- I visited Justin Taylor when his business, Taylor Design Healthy Homes, was in Vermont. He's a second generation builder of chemically safe refurbished Airstream trailers. His father, Tad Taylor, set the standard for early chemically safe housing, and his reference books are invaluable for chem-safe builders.
- Valerie Fletcher, director of the Institute for Human Centered Design, Willa Crolius and Ruth Super, sat with me for several hours when I blew off the street into their wondrous space, and gave me encouragement, opportunities, contacts, sources and hot tea. I learned about the advances and limits of Universal Design, and got to speak about in their lunchtime lecture series on how they do and don't meet the needs of people like me.
- Through IHCD I was introduced to Sean Solley, an Associate Professor of Interior Architecture & Design at Suffolk University's New England School of Art and Design. His Spring, 2014 universal design students spent five weeks focused on brainstorming design and materials ideas for my Vehicle, a wealth of creative thinking I can now tap as I finalize my plans.
- I found Advantage Trailers through on online search. They make a wide variety of trailers, are good at customizing, and the factory that does their manufacturing for them employs mostly Amish workers. i don't know that their tradition of excellent craft carries over into trailer-making, but I like to imagine it does. Pamela Hinds talked me through the early stages of the process, and then I went to Illinois and met Jim Groveau the head designer, who helped me nail down a bunch of design details.
- I met Marc Rudnick through our mutual friend, photographer Linda Haas. Marc is a member of Community Builders, a worker owned construction cooperative in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Marc is consulting with me for now, and at some point will likely sign on to build the interior of my Vehicle.
- Dave Halloran, Paul Breneman and Johnny Osband are my current crew. Dave and Paul are members of Community Builders Cooperative. Johnny is an architect and also does hands on work.