Page 22 RAIN March/April 1984 In December 1979, RUNT received a conditional title to the house, stipulating that the house be brought up to code within 18 months. (It ended up taking three and one-half years.) With pledges of donations, construction materials, and skilled labor, and a $10,000 grant from the Oregon Department of Energy to pay a coordinator, the group commenced its quixotic endeavor. Being part of this organization was a bit like taking a ride on a roller coaster. There were times when we harbored decidedly noncooperative, non-nurturing, antipacifist, and just plain angry feelings about each other. And yet, many of us continue to be close friends: We've been through an ordeal together. We've argued over countless design decisions and cried when a major fundraiser failed. We did wonder when, though rarely if, we would eventually complete this project. Collectively, RUNT comprises many unabashed optimists—people who were determined to see it happen. That the house be built by sharing skills, essentially through hands-on workshops and consensus-based decision making, was considered vital to the success of the project. Throughout the construction phase of the project, numerous discussions occurred over the often conflicting goals of finishing the house and being involved in community development. The debate centered After: Eliot Energy House, 1983 not on whether they were both desirable goals, but whether there was enough energy and resources to pursue both goals at once. But the community-development supporters prevailed, and RUNT furthered this commitment by bringing in three VISTA volunteers to increase community participation in RUNT and to begin community-organizing efforts in the Eliot neighborhood. What were the results of these years of hard work? Well, at least two marriages and a dozen romances are directly attributable to those people's involvement in RUNT. An early decision of RUNT was that a committee would design the house and that this committee, at least initially, would strive to operate by consensus. Strong personalities and varying opinions gave the design committee a stormy character. A couple of design committee members, who have agreed on the impossibility of consensus decision making for a task of this nature, have come away with different opinions of "design by committee." According to Jerome Chievara, who began to volunteer in fall 1981 and later became construction coordinator, "Design by committee, in my opinion, is not a good way to do a project of this nature. We never really arrived at a congenial consensus on most things in the house." John Perry, a volunteer architect who was a member of the design committee from the beginning through the completion of the house, says, "I think it [design by committee] works. I think anyone who has been through it would agree that the end result is much more vital, and really better. It added a lot to the design of the house—it added a complexity of ideas that one person never would have come up with." In the process of completing the house, RUNT held approximately 50 workshops on topics ranging from safe demolition techniques to finish carpentry. Says Chievara, "For us, the process of building was as important as the product. This house was supposed to be a learning process for everyone who participated." The workshops were clearly an excellent means to teach valuable skills, but they were a less than effective way to renovate and retrofit a house. "To sum up about the workshops," says Chievara, "the original idea that individuals from the community at large would turn out to learn construction skills and that the house was going to be completed by this process was overly optimistic." As it became apparent that RUNT could not possibly hope to complete the project by workshops and volunteers alone, it began to explore other methods. RUNT i
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