Forget about Junktown, San Francisco's where it's at!

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SCRAPHOUSE

http://www.scraphouse.org/

If the thought of making junk into a house isn't frightening enough, add the fact it had to be completed in 30 days. Readers, this is the stuff building nightmares and horror films are made of.

But, like so many summer films, it has an uplifting -- and truly amazing -- ending: The house was completed on San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, in front of City Hall, in time for World Environment Day. It was open for public tour from June 2 to 5, 2005.

Thankfully, the process and finished product were caught on tape and will be broadcast; because, although nearly 10,000 people went through the house, many more people will be interested (see sidebar for times, channels and locations).

I'm embarrassed to say I didn't find out about the endeavor until I read about the documentary screening happening as part of Architecture + the City Month. After watching an advance copy, my guess is the participants were too exhausted at the time to put much effort into publicity.

Here's how it started: Local filmmaker Anna Fitch was brainstorming ideas for a documentary with showman Chicken John in the now defunct Odeon Bar. "We were trying to come up with ideas that translated on television," says Fitch. "Chicken has been making things out of garbage his whole life, and I've been inspired by scrap for a long time, having lived in a lot of scrappy warehouses with artists where we had to make everything ourselves. We had the idea to build a house out of what's being thrown away. It seemed like a good way to push the limits of what's possible with scrap."

The key to taking the idea from bar napkin to reality was the interest of one man: Laurence Kornfield, a chief building inspector in the city's Department of Building Inspection. Builders and remodelers say a lot of things about the building department, and some of them would have to be bleeped if included in a television documentary. But a person can't help but feel affection for this emissary when listening to him speak about his desire to find a way to build with re-used and re-purposed materials.

In the documentary, Kornfield confesses it's an idea he had been thinking about for years. When an architect friend introduced Fitch to him, the project found a champion who could make it happen. There was only one catch: He wanted to make it happen in a matter of weeks, in front of City Hall and in time for World Environment Day.

It was Kornfield who brought in architect John Peterson, founder of Public Architecture (a nonprofit entity that takes on pro bono projects that serve the public interest), as a team leader. Kornfield also persuaded contractor John Pollard to cancel a two-week vacation and work on ScrapHouse instead. In turn, they helped drum up more volunteers.

"John was very clever in the way he asked me to do this," says Mark Jensen, one of the many architects who gave his time for free. "He asked me, and then said: 'Don't give me your answer right away, think about it and get back to me tomorrow.' Well, if you get architects thinking about a project, they will get interested in it. I agreed to do it even though the schedule was totally, utterly ridiculous."

So, the team -- volunteer architects, designers, engineers and materials wranglers (people who found the trash and got it to the building site) -- started working, the cameras started rolling, and Fitch started to get worried. "ScrapHouse tended to divide people into two camps: optimists and pessimists," she says. "There were so many times when the whole thing almost fell through. I couldn't get funding, the contractor walked off the job, materials couldn't be found ... all of these impossible things."

And therein lies the nail-biting, thrill-inducing nature of the program. If you have ever taken on a remodel project, no matter how small, you will recognize the desperation you see on the faces of the volunteers. Now, imagine there were only 30 days to get the project done AND it would be on display for the whole city to see.

To make the impossible possible, ScrapHouse became a three-legged beast racing toward a finish line. One leg was a scrap wrangler who calls himself Flash. He led a team into junk and salvage yards throughout the region in search of building materials. Pollard (the contractor who would eventually walk off the job in disgust, but return to save the day) led a team of builders. Peterson helped direct the architects and designers who created the house.

"It was topsy-turvy in the way it came together," Peterson says. "Normally, an architect designs a project first and then it's built. In this case, the tail that wagged the dog was the materials. We had to see what we could find and then we had to figure out how to use it."

Innovative use of materials is just one of the things that make this program a must-see for anyone interested in recycling, building or design. It's hard to know where to begin to describe it, but here goes: The exterior of the house is shingled with street signs, back-painted glass shower doors, and scraps of sheet metal. The roof is made of old billboards. The interior walls are clad in discarded fire hoses, phone books and computer keyboards. Floors are made from old doors. Countertops are made from junk tile. A chandelier, a real beauty, is constructed of old stoplights. Another light fixture is made up of cast-off desk lamps sitting on a hanging platform. Every stick of furniture and every little accessory -- chairs, beds, cups, faucets -- is pulled straight out of the trash heap.

So, it can be done - and in our lifetime Post-apocalyptic dwellings for theh win and in your neighbourhood!