MIT Design Studio Presentation

How do we encourage farmers to live on the land? Professor Jan Wampler and a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) architecture students have spent the last few months designing a small farm dwelling to be part of a clustered agricultural community in North Kohala, tentatively named by the landowner “Whalewatch Village.” The MIT group spent time on the island in October becoming oriented to local planning issues, meeting with key community members and government officials, and collecting information about community planning concerns and desired planning parameters. Back at MIT, they designed the housing, village, overall plan, and a small structure called “H3.”

The MIT students were tasked with exploring the feasibility of using local materials and resources in their building design. “All of us, everywhere, must start doing this, explains Professor Wampler. For too long we have been dependent on outside resources—literally, the whole world—for our materials and food. This must stop, and this was our big challenge, but also an exciting new future,” Wampler says.

Wampler and the students designed a cluster of ten houses plus a community building, which they hope can be constructed with locally sourced bamboo. They also designed a portable structure to house an approved composting toilet, a shower, and a sink, utilizing bamboo walls. This “Hawai‘i Hygiene Hut,” or “H3,” structure could potentially satisfy Department of Health requirements at a much lower cost than a traditional cesspool or septic system. MIT planning students are now working to calculate the costs of building the proposed housing structures, presuming that construction would be locally based, utilizing local bamboo. The MIT students are also reviewing Hawai‘i County’s current building and zoning codes to assess changes that might need to be made to these codes to permit such structures to be built on the island. One product of the students’ work will be to outline proposed amendments to current codes to expedite construction of affordable farm dwellings on the island.

Hawai‘i Island has the will to work for a better life,” comments Professor Wampler. “This island has the opportunity to show many places in the world how to create a new future. My students and I would like to continue working on the island,” says Wampler.

The Kohala Center hosted a public presentation of MIT designs for interested community members on Friday, January 8, in North Kohala. Over sixty people attended this presentation by Professor Wampler and his team, and the presentation was well received by the audience.

View the PowerPoint for Whalewatch Village design.

Read "The Next Generation of Architects" and "Designing Affordable Farm Dwellings" in the November/December issue of our e-newsletter, The Leaflet.