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I have a few pictures of what I do

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and I'll speak about some of them,

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and then I'll let them
continue to scroll

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as I talk a little bit
about how I'm able to do what I do.

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All these houses are built

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from between 70 and 80 percent
recycled material,

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stuff that was headed to the mulcher,
the landfill, the burn pile.

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It was all just gone.

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This is the first house I built.

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These are hickory nuts up there.

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This double front door here
with the three-light transom,

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that was headed to the landfill.

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Have a little turret there.

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And then these buttons
on the corbels here...

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Right there...

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Those are hickory nuts.

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And these buttons there...

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Those are chicken eggs.

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(Laughter)

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Of course, first you have breakfast,

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and then you fill the shell full
of Bondo and paint it and nail it up,

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and you have an architectural button
in just a fraction of the time.

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This is a look at the inside.

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You can see the three-light transom
there with the eyebrow windows.

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Certainly an architectural antique
headed to the landfill...

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Even the lockset
is probably worth 200 dollars.

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Everything in the kitchen was salvaged.

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There's a 1952 O'Keefe Merritt stove,

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if you like to cook... cool stove.

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This is going up into the turret.

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I got that staircase for 20 dollars,

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including delivery to my lot.

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(Laughter)

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Then, looking up in the turret,

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you see there are bulges
and pokes and sags and so forth.

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Well, if that ruins your life,

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well, then, you shouldn't live there.

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(Laughter)

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This is a laundry chute.

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And this right here is a shoe last...

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Those are those cast-iron things
you see at antique shops.

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So I had one of those,

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so I made some low-tech gadgetry,
where you just stomp on the shoe last,

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and then the door flies open
and you throw your laundry down.

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And then if you're smart enough,
it goes on a basket on top of the washer.

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If not, it goes into the toilet.

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(Laughter)

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This is a bathtub I made,

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made out of scrap two-by-four.

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Started with the rim, and then glued
and nailed it up into a flat,

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corbeled it up and flipped it over,

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then did the two profiles on this side.

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It's a two-person tub.

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After all, it's not just
a question of hygiene,

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but there's a possibility
of recreation as well.

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(Laughter)

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Then, this faucet here
is just a piece of Osage orange.

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It looks a little phallic,

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but after all, it's a bathroom.

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(Laughter)

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This is a house based on a Budweiser can.

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It doesn't look like a can of beer,

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but the design take-offs
are absolutely unmistakable:

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the barley hops design
worked up into the eaves,

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then the dentil work comes directly
off the can's red, white, blue and silver.

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Then, these corbels going
down underneath the eaves

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are that little design
that comes off the can.

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I just put a can on a copier
and kept enlarging it

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until I got the size I want.

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Then, on the can it says,

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"This is the famous Budweiser beer,

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we know of no other beer,
blah, blah, blah."

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So we changed that and put,

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"This is the famous Budweiser house.
We don't know of any other house ..."

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and so forth and so on.

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This is a deadbolt.

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It's a fence from a 1930s shaper,
which is a very angry woodworking machine.

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And they gave me the fence,
but they didn't give me the shaper,

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so we made a deadbolt out of it.

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That'll keep bull elephants
out, I promise.

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(Laughter)

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And sure enough, we've had
no problems with bull elephants.

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(Laughter)

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The shower is intended
to simulate a glass of beer.

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We've got bubbles going up there,
then suds at the top with lumpy tiles.

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Where do you get lumpy tiles?
Well, of course, you don't.

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But I get a lot of toilets, and so you
just dispatch a toilet with a hammer,

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and then you have lumpy tiles.

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And then the faucet is a beer tap.

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(Laughter)

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Then, this panel of glass
is the same panel of glass

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that occurs in every middle-class
front door in America.

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We're getting tired of it.
It's kind of clichéd now.

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If you put it in the front door,
your design fails.

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So don't put it in the front door;
put it somewhere else.

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It's a pretty panel of glass.

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But if you put it in the front door,

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people say, "Oh, you're trying
to be like those guys,

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and you didn't make it."

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So don't put it there.

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Then, another bathroom upstairs.

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This light up here

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is the same light that occurs
in every middle-class foyer in America.

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Don't put it in the foyer.

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Put it in the shower, or in the closet,

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but not in the foyer.

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Then, somebody gave me
a bidet, so it got a bidet.

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(Laughter)

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This little house here,

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those branches there are made
out of Bois d'arc or Osage orange.

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These pictures will keep scrolling
as I talk a little bit.

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In order to do what I do,

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you have to understand what causes
waste in the building industry.

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Our housing has become a commodity,

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and I'll talk a little bit about that.

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But the first cause of waste
is probably even buried in our DNA.

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Human beings have a need
for maintaining consistency

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of the apperceptive mass.

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What does that mean?

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What it means is,
for every perception we have,

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it needs to tally
with the one like it before,

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or we don't have continuity,
and we become a little bit disoriented.

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So I can show you an object
you've never seen before.

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Oh, that's a cell phone.

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But you've never seen this one before.

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What you're doing

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is sizing up the pattern
of structural features,

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and then you go through your databanks:

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Cell phone. Oh! That's a cell phone.

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If I took a bite out of it, you'd go,

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"Wait a second.

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(Laughter)

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"That's not a cell phone.

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That's one of those new
chocolate cell phones."

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(Laughter)

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You'd have to start a new category,

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right between cell phones and chocolate.

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(Laughter)

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That's how we process information.

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You translate that
to the building industry.

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If we have a wall of windowpanes
and one pane is cracked, we go,

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"Oh, dear. That's cracked.
Let's repair it.

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Let's take it out and throw it away
so nobody can use it

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and put a new one in."

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Because that's what you do
with a cracked pane.

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Never mind that it doesn't
affect our lives at all.

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It only rattles that expected pattern
and unity of structural features.

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However, if we took a small hammer,

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and we added cracks
to all the other windows...

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(Laughter)

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then we have a pattern.

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Because Gestalt psychology
emphasizes recognition of pattern

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over parts that comprise a pattern.

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We'll go, "Ooh, that's nice."

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So, that serves me every day.

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Repetition creates pattern.

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If I have 100 of these, 100 of those,

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it makes no difference
what these and those are.

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If I can repeat anything,
I have the possibility of a pattern,

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from hickory nuts and chicken eggs,
shards of glass, branches.

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It doesn't make any difference.

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That causes a lot of waste
in the building industry.

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The second cause is,

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Friedrich Nietzsche, along about 1885,

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wrote a book titled
"The Birth of Tragedy."

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And in there,

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he said cultures tend to swing
between one of two perspectives:

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on the one hand,
we have an Apollonian perspective,

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which is very crisp and premeditated
and intellectualized

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and perfect.

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On the other end of the spectrum,
we have a Dionysian perspective,

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which is more given
to the passions and intuition,

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tolerant of organic texture
and human gesture.

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So the way the Apollonian personality
takes a picture or hangs a picture is,

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they'll get out a transit

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and a laser level

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and a micrometer.

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"OK, honey. A thousandth
of an inch to the left.

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That's where we want
the picture. Right. Perfect!"

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Predicated on plumb level,
square and centered.

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The Dionysian personality
takes the picture and goes:

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(Laughter)

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That's the difference.

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I feature blemish.

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I feature organic process.

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Dead center John Dewey.

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Apollonian mindset
creates mountains of waste.

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If something isn't perfect,

189
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if it doesn't line up
with that premeditated model?

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Dumpster.

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"Oops. Scratch. Dumpster."

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"Oops" this, "oops" that.
Landfill, landfill, landfill.

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The third thing is arguably...

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The Industrial Revolution
started in the Renaissance

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with the rise of humanism,

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then got a little jump start
along about the French Revolution.

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By the middle of the 19th century,
it's in full flower.

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And we have dumaflaches and gizmos

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and contraptions that will do anything

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that we, up to that point,

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had to do by hand.

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So now we have standardized materials.

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Well, trees don't grow
two inches by four inches,

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eight, ten and twelve feet tall.

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(Laughter)

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We create mountains of waste.

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00:08:43,067 --> 00:08:46,608
And they're doing a pretty good job
there in the forest,

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working all the byproduct
of their industry...

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With OSB and particle board
and so forth and so on...

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But it does no good

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00:08:53,753 --> 00:08:56,826
to be responsible at the point
of harvest in the forest

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if consumers are wasting the harvest
at the point of consumption.

213
00:09:00,233 --> 00:09:01,724
And that's what's happening.

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And so if something isn't standard,

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"Oops, dumpster." "Oops" this.
"Oops, warped."

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If you buy a two-by-four
and it's not straight,

217
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you can take it back.

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"Oh, I'm so sorry, sir.
We'll get you a straight one."

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Well, I feature all those warped things

220
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because repetition creates pattern,

221
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and it's from a Dionysian perspective.

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The fourth thing

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is labor is disproportionately
more expensive than materials.

224
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Well, that's just a myth.

225
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And there's a story:

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00:09:27,919 --> 00:09:31,478
Jim Tulles, one of the guys I trained...
I said, "Jim, it's time now.

227
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I got a job for you as a foreman
on a framing crew. Time for you to go."

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"Dan, I just don't think I'm ready."

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"Jim, now it's time.
You're the down... oh!"

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So we hired on.

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And he was out there with a tape measure,
going through the trash heap,

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looking for header material,
or the board that goes over a door,

233
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thinking he'd impress his boss...
That's how we taught him to do it.

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The superintendent walked up
and said, "What are you doing?"

235
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"Oh, just looking for header material,"

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waiting for that kudos.

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He said, "I'm not paying you to go
through the trash. Get back to work."

238
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And Jim had the wherewithal to say,

239
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"You know, if you were paying me
300 dollars an hour,

240
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I can see how you might say that.

241
00:10:07,608 --> 00:10:10,685
But right now, I'm saving you
five dollars a minute.

242
00:10:10,709 --> 00:10:12,057
Do the math."

243
00:10:12,081 --> 00:10:14,405
(Laughter)

244
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"Good call, Tulles. From now on,
you guys hit this pile first."

245
00:10:17,667 --> 00:10:20,142
And the irony is that he wasn't
very good at math.

246
00:10:20,166 --> 00:10:23,572
(Laughter)

247
00:10:23,596 --> 00:10:26,247
But once in a while,
you get access to the control room,

248
00:10:26,271 --> 00:10:28,380
and then you can
kind of mess with the dials.

249
00:10:28,404 --> 00:10:29,969
And that's what happened there.

250
00:10:30,638 --> 00:10:33,037
The fifth thing is that maybe,
after 2,500 years,

251
00:10:33,061 --> 00:10:36,379
Plato is still having his way with us
in his notion of perfect forms.

252
00:10:36,403 --> 00:10:40,575
He said that we have in our noggin
the perfect idea of what we want,

253
00:10:40,599 --> 00:10:43,576
and we force environmental
resources to accommodate that.

254
00:10:43,600 --> 00:10:46,058
So we all have in our head
the perfect house,

255
00:10:46,082 --> 00:10:48,312
the American dream, which is a house,

256
00:10:48,336 --> 00:10:49,923
the dream house.

257
00:10:49,947 --> 00:10:51,726
The problem is we can't afford it.

258
00:10:51,750 --> 00:10:53,726
So we have the American dream look-alike,

259
00:10:53,750 --> 00:10:55,062
which is a mobile home.

260
00:10:55,086 --> 00:10:57,376
Now there's a blight on the planet.

261
00:10:57,400 --> 00:10:58,654
(Laughter)

262
00:10:58,678 --> 00:11:00,398
It's a chattel mortgage,

263
00:11:00,422 --> 00:11:02,399
just like furniture, just like a car.

264
00:11:02,423 --> 00:11:05,555
You write the check,
and instantly, it depreciates 30 percent.

265
00:11:05,579 --> 00:11:08,786
After a year, you can't get insurance
on everything you have in it,

266
00:11:08,810 --> 00:11:10,081
only on 70 percent.

267
00:11:10,105 --> 00:11:11,854
Wired with 14-Gauge wire, typically.

268
00:11:11,878 --> 00:11:13,046
Nothing wrong with that,

269
00:11:13,070 --> 00:11:15,916
unless you ask it to do
what 12-Gauge wire's supposed to do,

270
00:11:15,940 --> 00:11:17,143
and that's what happens.

271
00:11:17,167 --> 00:11:18,648
It out-gasses formaldehyde...

272
00:11:18,672 --> 00:11:22,813
So much so that there is
a federal law in place

273
00:11:22,837 --> 00:11:27,401
to warn new mobile home buyers
of the formaldehyde atmosphere danger.

274
00:11:27,425 --> 00:11:29,471
Are we just being numbingly stupid?

275
00:11:29,495 --> 00:11:31,302
The walls are this thick.

276
00:11:31,326 --> 00:11:34,303
The whole thing has
the structural value of corn.

277
00:11:34,327 --> 00:11:36,210
(Laughter)

278
00:11:36,234 --> 00:11:38,806
"So... I thought Palm Harbor
Village was over there."

279
00:11:38,830 --> 00:11:40,868
"No, no. We had a wind last night.

280
00:11:40,892 --> 00:11:42,464
It's gone now."

281
00:11:42,488 --> 00:11:45,726
(Laughter)

282
00:11:45,750 --> 00:11:48,151
Then when they degrade,
what do you do with them?

283
00:11:48,559 --> 00:11:50,263
Now, all that...

284
00:11:50,826 --> 00:11:53,574
That Apollonian, Platonic model...

285
00:11:53,598 --> 00:11:56,161
Is what the building industry
is predicated on,

286
00:11:56,185 --> 00:11:58,861
and there are a number of things
that exacerbate that.

287
00:11:58,885 --> 00:12:01,403
One is that all the professionals,

288
00:12:01,427 --> 00:12:03,094
all the tradesmen, vendors,

289
00:12:03,118 --> 00:12:05,496
inspectors, engineers, architects

290
00:12:05,520 --> 00:12:07,166
all think like this.

291
00:12:07,638 --> 00:12:09,844
And then it works its way
back to the consumer,

292
00:12:09,868 --> 00:12:11,312
who demands the same model.

293
00:12:11,336 --> 00:12:14,155
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We can't get out of it.

294
00:12:14,471 --> 00:12:17,047
Then here come the marketeers
and the advertisers.

295
00:12:17,071 --> 00:12:19,495
"Woo. Woo-hoo."

296
00:12:20,119 --> 00:12:22,655
We buy stuff we didn't know we needed.

297
00:12:22,750 --> 00:12:25,282
All we have to do
is look at what one company did

298
00:12:25,306 --> 00:12:27,297
with carbonated prune juice.

299
00:12:27,321 --> 00:12:28,726
How disgusting.

300
00:12:28,750 --> 00:12:30,542
(Laughter)

301
00:12:30,566 --> 00:12:31,874
But you know what they did?

302
00:12:31,898 --> 00:12:34,974
They hooked a metaphor into it
and said, "I drink Dr. Pepper ..."

303
00:12:34,998 --> 00:12:37,992
And pretty soon, we're swilling
that stuff by the lake-ful,

304
00:12:38,016 --> 00:12:39,727
by the billions of gallons.

305
00:12:39,751 --> 00:12:42,888
It doesn't even have real prunes!
Doesn't even keep you regular.

306
00:12:42,912 --> 00:12:44,672
(Laughter)

307
00:12:44,696 --> 00:12:46,726
My oh my, that makes it worse.

308
00:12:46,750 --> 00:12:49,946
And we get sucked
into that faster than anything.

309
00:12:49,970 --> 00:12:52,679
Then, a man named
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a book

310
00:12:52,703 --> 00:12:54,188
titled "Being and Nothingness."

311
00:12:54,212 --> 00:12:57,134
It's a pretty quick read.
You can snap through it in maybe...

312
00:12:57,158 --> 00:12:58,222
(Laughter)

313
00:12:58,246 --> 00:12:59,398
maybe two years,

314
00:12:59,422 --> 00:13:01,154
if you read eight hours a day.

315
00:13:01,750 --> 00:13:04,063
In there, he talked
about the divided self.

316
00:13:04,087 --> 00:13:07,165
He said human beings act differently
when they know they're alone

317
00:13:07,189 --> 00:13:09,249
than when they know
somebody else is around.

318
00:13:09,273 --> 00:13:11,575
So if I'm eating spaghetti,
and I know I'm alone,

319
00:13:11,599 --> 00:13:13,067
I can eat like a backhoe.

320
00:13:13,091 --> 00:13:16,305
I can wipe my mouth on my sleeve,
napkin on the table,

321
00:13:16,329 --> 00:13:19,646
chew with my mouth open,
make little noises,

322
00:13:19,670 --> 00:13:21,647
scratch wherever I want.

323
00:13:21,671 --> 00:13:23,531
(Laughter)

324
00:13:23,555 --> 00:13:25,002
But as soon as you walk in,

325
00:13:25,026 --> 00:13:27,504
I go, "Oops! Lil' spaghetti sauce there."

326
00:13:27,528 --> 00:13:29,381
Napkin in my lap, half-bites,

327
00:13:29,405 --> 00:13:31,638
chew with my mouth closed, no scratching.

328
00:13:34,267 --> 00:13:38,096
Now, what I'm doing
is fulfilling your expectations

329
00:13:38,121 --> 00:13:40,003
of how I should live my life.

330
00:13:41,419 --> 00:13:43,201
I feel that expectation,

331
00:13:43,225 --> 00:13:44,641
and so I accommodate it,

332
00:13:44,665 --> 00:13:47,911
and I'm living my life according
to what you expect me to do.

333
00:13:47,935 --> 00:13:50,206
That happens in the building
industry as well.

334
00:13:50,230 --> 00:13:53,085
That's why all subdivisions look the same.

335
00:13:53,109 --> 00:13:57,824
Sometimes, we even have
these formalized cultural expectations.

336
00:13:57,849 --> 00:13:59,726
I'll bet all your shoes match.

337
00:13:59,750 --> 00:14:01,935
Sure enough, we all buy into that...

338
00:14:01,959 --> 00:14:03,609
(Laughter)

339
00:14:03,633 --> 00:14:06,058
And with gated communities,

340
00:14:06,082 --> 00:14:08,458
we have a formalized expectation,

341
00:14:08,482 --> 00:14:10,060
with a homeowners' association.

342
00:14:10,084 --> 00:14:11,782
Sometimes those guys are Nazis,

343
00:14:11,806 --> 00:14:13,153
my oh my.

344
00:14:14,130 --> 00:14:17,106
That exacerbates and continues this model.

345
00:14:17,912 --> 00:14:19,819
The last thing is gregariousness.

346
00:14:20,608 --> 00:14:22,521
Human beings are a social species.

347
00:14:22,545 --> 00:14:25,243
We like to hang together in groups,

348
00:14:25,267 --> 00:14:28,046
just like wildebeests, just like lions.

349
00:14:28,071 --> 00:14:29,727
Wildebeests don't hang with lions,

350
00:14:29,751 --> 00:14:31,401
because lions eat wildebeests.

351
00:14:31,790 --> 00:14:33,236
Human beings are like that.

352
00:14:33,260 --> 00:14:35,356
We do what that group does

353
00:14:35,380 --> 00:14:37,236
that we're trying to identify with.

354
00:14:37,782 --> 00:14:39,765
You see this in junior high a lot.

355
00:14:40,391 --> 00:14:44,762
Those kids, they'll work
all summer long... kill themselves...

356
00:14:44,786 --> 00:14:48,994
So that they can afford
one pair of designer jeans.

357
00:14:49,018 --> 00:14:51,276
So along about September,

358
00:14:51,300 --> 00:14:53,277
they can stride in and go,

359
00:14:53,301 --> 00:14:57,515
"I'm important today. See?
Don't touch my designer jeans!

360
00:14:57,539 --> 00:15:00,376
I see you don't have designer jeans.

361
00:15:00,400 --> 00:15:04,096
You're not one of the beautiful...
See, I'm one of the beautiful people.

362
00:15:04,120 --> 00:15:05,308
See my jeans?"

363
00:15:05,332 --> 00:15:07,718
Right there is reason
enough to have uniforms.

364
00:15:08,285 --> 00:15:11,319
And so that happens
in the building industry as well.

365
00:15:11,778 --> 00:15:15,997
We have confused
Maslow's hierarchy of needs,

366
00:15:16,021 --> 00:15:17,626
just a little bit.

367
00:15:17,650 --> 00:15:21,004
On the bottom tier, we have basic needs:

368
00:15:21,028 --> 00:15:24,562
shelter, clothing, food,
water, mating and so forth.

369
00:15:24,586 --> 00:15:26,924
Second: security. Third: relationships.

370
00:15:26,948 --> 00:15:29,966
Fourth: status, self-esteem...
That is, vanity...

371
00:15:29,990 --> 00:15:32,588
And we're taking vanity
and shoving it down here.

372
00:15:33,443 --> 00:15:34,849
And so we end up

373
00:15:35,927 --> 00:15:37,903
with vain decisions,

374
00:15:38,705 --> 00:15:40,897
and we can't even afford our mortgage.

375
00:15:40,921 --> 00:15:43,675
We can't afford to eat
anything except beans;

376
00:15:43,699 --> 00:15:47,270
that is, our housing
has become a commodity.

377
00:15:47,913 --> 00:15:50,572
And it takes a little bit of nerve

378
00:15:51,223 --> 00:15:53,626
to dive into those primal,

379
00:15:53,650 --> 00:15:55,853
terrifying parts of ourselves

380
00:15:56,650 --> 00:15:58,594
and make our own decisions

381
00:15:59,102 --> 00:16:01,079
and not make our housing a commodity,

382
00:16:01,103 --> 00:16:04,626
but make it something
that bubbles up from seminal sources.

383
00:16:04,650 --> 00:16:06,427
That takes a little bit of nerve,

384
00:16:06,451 --> 00:16:09,176
and, darn it, once in a while, you fail.

385
00:16:10,073 --> 00:16:11,864
But that's okay.

386
00:16:13,280 --> 00:16:15,068
If failure destroys you,

387
00:16:15,092 --> 00:16:16,322
then you can't do this.

388
00:16:16,346 --> 00:16:18,852
I fail all the time, every day,

389
00:16:18,876 --> 00:16:22,588
and I've had some whopping
failures, I promise...

390
00:16:23,712 --> 00:16:26,726
Big, public, humiliating,
embarrassing failures.

391
00:16:26,750 --> 00:16:28,190
Everybody points and laughs,

392
00:16:28,214 --> 00:16:31,310
and they say, "He tried it a fifth time,
and it still didn't work!

393
00:16:31,334 --> 00:16:32,714
What a moron!"

394
00:16:32,738 --> 00:16:34,726
Early on, contractors come by and say,

395
00:16:34,750 --> 00:16:36,513
"Dan, you're a cute little bunny,

396
00:16:36,537 --> 00:16:38,695
but you know,
this just isn't going to work.

397
00:16:38,719 --> 00:16:41,050
What don't you do this?
Why don't you do that?"

398
00:16:41,074 --> 00:16:43,580
And your instinct is to say,

399
00:16:43,604 --> 00:16:45,271
"Well, why don't you suck an egg?"

400
00:16:45,295 --> 00:16:46,726
(Laughter)

401
00:16:46,750 --> 00:16:48,414
But you don't say that,

402
00:16:48,438 --> 00:16:50,544
because they're the guys you're targeting.

403
00:16:51,391 --> 00:16:54,370
And so what we've done...

404
00:16:54,394 --> 00:16:57,787
And this isn't just in housing;
it's in clothing and food

405
00:16:57,811 --> 00:17:00,664
and our transportation
needs, our energy...

406
00:17:00,688 --> 00:17:03,263
We sprawl just a little bit.

407
00:17:04,195 --> 00:17:06,726
And when I get a little bit of press,

408
00:17:06,750 --> 00:17:08,710
I hear from people all over the world.

409
00:17:09,059 --> 00:17:11,877
And we may have invented excess,

410
00:17:11,902 --> 00:17:15,319
but the problem of waste is worldwide.

411
00:17:16,384 --> 00:17:19,361
We're in trouble.

412
00:17:19,385 --> 00:17:22,439
And I don't wear ammo belts
crisscrossing my chest

413
00:17:22,463 --> 00:17:23,833
and a red bandana.

414
00:17:24,575 --> 00:17:26,194
But we're clearly in trouble.

415
00:17:26,798 --> 00:17:30,726
And what we need to do is reconnect

416
00:17:30,750 --> 00:17:34,387
with those really primal
parts of ourselves

417
00:17:34,411 --> 00:17:36,457
and make some decisions and say,

418
00:17:36,481 --> 00:17:41,210
"You know, I think I would like to put
CDs across the wall there.

419
00:17:41,234 --> 00:17:42,598
What do you think, honey?"

420
00:17:43,211 --> 00:17:44,906
If it doesn't work, take it down.

421
00:17:46,059 --> 00:17:49,035
What we need to do is reconnect
with who we really are,

422
00:17:49,662 --> 00:17:51,638
and that's thrilling indeed.

423
00:17:52,683 --> 00:17:53,866
Thank you very much.

424
00:17:53,890 --> 00:17:57,750
(Applause)