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(Applause)

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Thank you very much.

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I have a few pictures,

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and I'll talk a little bit about

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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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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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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

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in just a fraction of the time.

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Then, this is a look at the inside.

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You can see the three-light transom there

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with the eyebrow windows --

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certainly an architectural antique

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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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And 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, there,

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where you just stomp on the shoe last

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and then the door flies open, 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 here.

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Started with a rim there

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and then glued and nailed it up into a flat,

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corbelled 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

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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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Then, 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 corbeles 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

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and kept enlarging it 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, we know of no other beer, blah, blah, blah."

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So we changed that and put, "This is the famous Budweiser house.

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We don't know of any other house," and so forth and so on.

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Then, this is a deadbolt. It's a fence from a 1930s shaper,

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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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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, there,

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is a beer tap.

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(Laughter)

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Then, this panel of glass

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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 cliched now.

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So 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 then if you put it in the front door,

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people say, "Oh, you're trying to be like those guys, 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 is the same light that occurs

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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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and these pictures will keep scrolling

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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

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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,

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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 here,

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and then you go through your databanks -- brrrr, cell phone.

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Oh, that's a cell phone.

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If I took a bite out of it,

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you'd go, "Wait a second.

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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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And you'd have to start a new category,

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right between cell phones and chocolate.

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That's how we process information.

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So you translate that to the building industry,

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

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

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Let's take it out. Throw it away so nobody can use it 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

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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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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 a hundred of these, a hundred of those,

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it doesn't make any 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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Second is, Friedrich Nietzsche along about 1885

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wrote a book titled "The Birth of Tragedy."

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And in there he said

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that 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

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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,

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or hangs a picture,

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is they'll get out a transit

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and a laser level and a micrometer.

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"Okay, 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

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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,

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if it doesn't line up with that premeditated model, 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 dumaflages 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 my 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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We create mountains of waste.

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And they're doing a pretty good job

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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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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,

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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,

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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

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because repetition creates pattern,

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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.

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Well, that's just a myth.

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And here's a story: Jim Tulles, one of the guys I trained,

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I said, "Jim, it's time now.

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I got a job for you as a foreman on a framing crew. It's 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 his tape measure

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going through the trash heap, looking for header material,

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which is the board that goes over a door,

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

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

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"Oh, just looking for some header material,"

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waiting for that kudos.

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He said, "No, no. I'm not paying you to go through the trash. Get back to work."

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And he had the wherewithal to say,

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he said, "You know, if you were paying me

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300 dollars an hour,

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I can see how you might say that,

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but right now, I'm saving you five dollars a minute.

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Do the math."

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(Laughter)

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

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And the irony is that he wasn't very good at math.

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(Laughter)

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But once in a while you get access to the control room,

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and then you can kind of mess with the dials.

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And that's what happened there.

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The fifth thing is that maybe, after 2,500 years,

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Plato is still having his way with us in his notion of perfect forms.

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He said that we have in our noggin

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the perfect idea of what we want,

259
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and we force environmental resources to accommodate that.

260
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So we all have in our head the perfect house,

261
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the American dream, which is a house,

262
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the dream house.

263
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The problem is we can't afford it.

264
00:10:35,000 --> 00:10:37,000
So we have the American dream look-alike,

265
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which is a mobile home.

266
00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:42,000
Now there's a blight on the planet.

267
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:44,000
It's a chattel mortgage,

268
00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:46,000
just like furniture, just like a car.

269
00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:49,000
You write the check, and instantly it depreciates 30 percent.

270
00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:51,000
After a year, you can't get insurance on everything you have in it,

271
00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:53,000
only on 70 percent.

272
00:10:53,000 --> 00:10:55,000
Wired with 14-gauge wire typically.

273
00:10:55,000 --> 00:10:57,000
Nothing wrong with that,

274
00:10:57,000 --> 00:10:59,000
unless you ask it to do what 12-gauge wire's supposed to do,

275
00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:01,000
and that's what happens.

276
00:11:01,000 --> 00:11:03,000
It out-gasses formaldehyde so much so

277
00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:06,000
that there is a federal law in place

278
00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:08,000
to warn new mobile home buyers

279
00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:11,000
of the formaldehyde atmosphere danger.

280
00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:13,000
Are we just being numbingly stupid?

281
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The walls are this thick.

282
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The whole thing has the structural value of corn.

283
00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:20,000
(Laughter)

284
00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:22,000
"So I thought Palm Harbor Village was over there."

285
00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:24,000
"No, no. We had a wind last night.

286
00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:26,000
It's gone now."

287
00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:29,000
(Laughter)

288
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Then when they degrade, what do you do with them?

289
00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:34,000
Now, all that,

290
00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:37,000
that Apollonian, Platonic model,

291
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is what the building industry is predicated on,

292
00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:42,000
and there are a number of things that exacerbate that.

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One is that all the professionals,

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all the tradesmen, vendors,

295
00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:49,000
inspectors, engineers, architects

296
00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:51,000
all think like this.

297
00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:53,000
And then it works its way back to the consumer,

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who demands the same model.

299
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It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. We can't get out of it.

300
00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:01,000
Then here come the marketeers and the advertisers.

301
00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:03,000
"Woo. Woohooo."

302
00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:06,000
We buy stuff we didn't know we needed.

303
00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:08,000
All we have to do is look at

304
00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:10,000
what one company did with carbonated prune juice.

305
00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:12,000
How disgusting.

306
00:12:12,000 --> 00:12:14,000
(Laughter)

307
00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:16,000
But you know what they did? They hooked a metaphor into it

308
00:12:16,000 --> 00:12:18,000
and said, "I drink Dr. Pepper ..."

309
00:12:18,000 --> 00:12:21,000
And pretty soon, we're swilling that stuff by the lake-ful,

310
00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:23,000
by the billions of gallons.

311
00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:26,000
It doesn't even have real prunes. Doesn't even keep you regular.

312
00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:28,000
(Laughter)

313
00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:30,000
My oh my, that makes it worse.

314
00:12:30,000 --> 00:12:33,000
And we get sucked into that faster than anything.

315
00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:35,000
Then a man named Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a book

316
00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:37,000
titled "Being and Nothingness."

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It's a pretty quick read.

318
00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:42,000
You can snap through it in maybe two years

319
00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:45,000
if you read eight hours a day.

320
00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:47,000
In there he talked about the divided self.

321
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He said human beings act differently when they know they're alone

322
00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:52,000
than when they know somebody else is around.

323
00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:55,000
So if I'm eating spaghetti, and I know I'm alone,

324
00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,000
I can eat like a backhoe.

325
00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:00,000
I can wipe my mouth on my sleeve, napkin on the table,

326
00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:03,000
chew with my mouth open, make little noises,

327
00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:05,000
scratch wherever I want.

328
00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:07,000
(Laughter)

329
00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:09,000
But as soon as you walk in,

330
00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:11,000
I go, "Ooh. Spaghetti sauce there."

331
00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:13,000
Napkin in my lap, half bites,

332
00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:15,000
chew with my mouth closed, no scratching.

333
00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:17,000
Now what I'm doing

334
00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:20,000
is fulfilling your expectations

335
00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:23,000
of how I should live my life.

336
00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:25,000
I feel that expectation,

337
00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:27,000
and so I accommodate it,

338
00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:30,000
and I'm living my life according to what you expect me to do.

339
00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:32,000
That happens in the building industry as well.

340
00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:35,000
That's why all of our subdivisions look the same.

341
00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:37,000
Sometimes we even have

342
00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:39,000
these formalized cultural expectations.

343
00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:41,000
I'll bet all your shoes match.

344
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:44,000
Sure enough, we all buy into that,

345
00:13:44,000 --> 00:13:47,000
and with gated communities,

346
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:49,000
we have a formalized expectation

347
00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:51,000
with a homeowners association.

348
00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:53,000
Sometimes those guys are Nazis,

349
00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:55,000
my oh my.

350
00:13:56,000 --> 00:13:59,000
That exacerbates and continues this model.

351
00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:02,000
The last thing is gregariousness.

352
00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:04,000
Human beings are a social species.

353
00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:06,000
We like to hang together in groups,

354
00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:08,000
just like wildebeests, just like lions.

355
00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:10,000
Wildebeests don't hang with lions

356
00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:12,000
because lions eat wildebeests.

357
00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:14,000
Human beings are like that.

358
00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:16,000
We do what that group does

359
00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:18,000
that we're trying to identify with.

360
00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:21,000
And so you see this in junior high a lot.

361
00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:24,000
Those kids, they'll work all summer long,

362
00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:26,000
kill themselves,

363
00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:28,000
so that they can afford

364
00:14:28,000 --> 00:14:30,000
one pair of designer jeans.

365
00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:32,000
So along about September

366
00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:34,000
they can stride in and go,

367
00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:36,000
"I'm important today.

368
00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:38,000
See, look, don't touch my designer jeans.

369
00:14:38,000 --> 00:14:41,000
I see you don't have designer jeans.

370
00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:43,000
You're not one of the beautiful people.

371
00:14:43,000 --> 00:14:46,000
See, I'm one of the beautiful people. See my jeans?"

372
00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:49,000
Right there is reason enough to have uniforms.

373
00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:52,000
And so that happens in the building industry as well.

374
00:14:52,000 --> 00:14:54,000
We have confused

375
00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:56,000
Maslow's hierarchy of needs

376
00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:58,000
just a little bit.

377
00:14:58,000 --> 00:15:00,000
On the bottom tier

378
00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:02,000
we have basic needs --

379
00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:05,000
shelter, clothing, food, water, mating and so forth.

380
00:15:05,000 --> 00:15:08,000
Second, security. Third, relationships.

381
00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:11,000
Fourth, status, self-esteem -- that is, vanity.

382
00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:14,000
And we're taking vanity and shoving it down here.

383
00:15:14,000 --> 00:15:17,000
And so we end up

384
00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:19,000
with vain decisions

385
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:21,000
and we can't even afford our mortgage.

386
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:24,000
We can't even afford to eat anything except beans.

387
00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:26,000
That is, our housing

388
00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:28,000
has become a commodity.

389
00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:31,000
And it takes a little bit of nerve

390
00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:34,000
to dive into those primal,

391
00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:37,000
terrifying parts of ourselves

392
00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:40,000
and make our own decisions

393
00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:42,000
and not make our housing a commodity,

394
00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:45,000
but make it something that bubbles up from seminal sources.

395
00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:47,000
That takes a little bit of nerve,

396
00:15:47,000 --> 00:15:50,000
and, darn it, once in a while you fail.

397
00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:52,000
But that's okay.

398
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:54,000
If failure destroys you,

399
00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:56,000
then you can't do this.

400
00:15:56,000 --> 00:15:58,000
I fail all the time, every day,

401
00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:01,000
and I've had some whopping failures, I promise,

402
00:16:01,000 --> 00:16:03,000
big, public, humiliating,

403
00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:05,000
embarrassing failures.

404
00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:07,000
Everybody points and laughs,

405
00:16:07,000 --> 00:16:09,000
and they say, "He tried it a fifth time and it still didn't work.

406
00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:11,000
What a moron."

407
00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:13,000
Early on, contractors come by and say,

408
00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:15,000
"Dan, you're a cute little bunny,

409
00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:17,000
but you know, this just isn't going to work.

410
00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:20,000
What don't you do this, and why don't you do that?"

411
00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:22,000
And your instinct is to say,

412
00:16:22,000 --> 00:16:24,000
"Why don't you suck an egg?"

413
00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:27,000
But you don't say that,

414
00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:30,000
because they're the guys you're targeting.

415
00:16:30,000 --> 00:16:32,000
And so what we've done --

416
00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:34,000
and this isn't just in housing.

417
00:16:34,000 --> 00:16:36,000
It's in clothing and food

418
00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:39,000
and our transportation needs, our energy --

419
00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:42,000
we sprawl just a little bit.

420
00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:45,000
And when I get a little bit of press,

421
00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:48,000
I hear from people all over the world.

422
00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:50,000
And we may have invented excess,

423
00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:52,000
but the problem of waste

424
00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:55,000
is worldwide.

425
00:16:55,000 --> 00:16:58,000
We're in trouble.

426
00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:01,000
And I don't wear ammo belts crisscrossing my chest

427
00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:03,000
and a red bandana,

428
00:17:03,000 --> 00:17:05,000
but we're clearly in trouble.

429
00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:07,000
And what we need to do

430
00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:09,000
is reconnect

431
00:17:09,000 --> 00:17:12,000
with those really primal parts of ourselves

432
00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:14,000
and make some decisions

433
00:17:14,000 --> 00:17:17,000
and say, "You know, I think I would like

434
00:17:17,000 --> 00:17:19,000
to put CDs across the wall there.

435
00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:22,000
What do you think, honey?"

436
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:24,000
If it doesn't work, take it down.

437
00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:28,000
What we need to do is reconnect with who we really are,

438
00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:30,000
and that's thrilling indeed.

439
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:32,000
Thank you very much.

440
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:36,000
(Applause)