2002 Kunga House : Project [DBB]

Project number three kicked up DesignBuildBLUFF plenty of notches, 2000 square feet of them – easily the most ambitious and challenging of the program’s efforts to date. Built for a Tibetan refugee family of 9, the Kunga House was the first straw bale construction to be permitted in the environs of the city or county, and was readily embraced by the head of the building and planning departments, who, fortunately for the students and program alike, were willing, excited and able to learn the alternative. The efforts of more than forty students, perhaps up to sixty individuals in all, including various hard-working volunteers, went into the design and construction of this energy efficient home (as example, during its first winter the father, Thupten, didn’t turn on the radiant heat boiler until early February) complete with a battered-wall Buddhist shrine for family worship and wheelchair accessibility for the mother, Phurbu, who had recently been injured in an automobile accident. Complete construction documents and engineering calculations were necessary to convince the city to allow such a form of alternate construction, providing students with an experience that complimentarily blended ideals and realities. Students also gained much in sharing the experience with the Kunga family, learning first hand about others’ cultural values and needs, celebrating with the entire local Tibetan community, and a lama with a chorus of monks blessing the progress at several stages along the process of construction.

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