How did you come to work with Make It Right? About six years ago I was at a firm in Kansas City called BNIM and we were doing disaster recovery projects. I was working in a little rural Kansas town called Greensburg after a Tornado leveled the town. Make It Right asked BNIM to design one of its early first-round houses for New Orleans so I traveled down there a few times. It became apparent that Make It Right could use a bit of landscape architecture and planning insight as they looked to build a sustainable community in the Lower Ninth Ward. I took a year's sabbatical and left the prairie and moved down to the swamps and had an amazing time with Make It Right. That turned into five-plus years of work with the organization. How did Make It Right come to work in Kansas City? As the Make it Right model began to evolve there was an interest to propagate the expertise and resources developed in New Orleans to other communities. There might not be a natural disaster involved—so many urban cores are faced with economic disasters. We started to look to other communities and develop Make It Right's strategic plan. The stars aligned in Kansas City with a political structure wanting to create this area called the "Green Impact Zone" and looking to focus investment in urban revitalization under the umbrella of sustainable redevelopment.

Can you tell us about the area around the project? How did it fall into decline? What's the make-up of the community now? Our project sits on a street called Troost Avenue. Starting in the late '50s and early '60s with the removal of the street car, suburban sprawl, and other elements, Troost became the de facto racial dividing line in the city—the other side of the tracks literally. The avenue runs over 90 blocks and has a straight shot in Kansas City and whether it was reality or perception, it's been a significant problem to overcome in Kansas City's current history. Quite a few groups have been lobbying hard for ways to change that perception and ways to figure out how investment can occur in that area. A house once block east of Troost is valued at half the price as what that same house one block west of Troost would be valued. Many cities have Troost avenues. Many cities have a racial dividing line—just 95 blocks of them being a straight line is not always the case.

Can you tell us a little about what the "Green Impact Zone" is? We use a phrase called "urban acupuncture." So many times in urban cores, communities never receive enough resources and when they do receive resources it's deployed in a scattered-sites approach. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver developed a vision to do the opposite of that: to define a boundary in an area that needs revitalization and be strategic in that investment until the area becomes sustainable once again. So there was a defined area, 150 square blocks, and it became apparent where strategic investment would occur. It could be new infrastructure projects in the form of streets or sidewalks, or a smart grid development for the infrastructure, or housing, or funding getting routed to the city services in this area. The idea is to really focus investment in an area and see what can happen when everyone gets the resources they need. We were the first project out of the gate and since that moment, over 110 million dollars of investment has been strategically diverted within a half-mile walkable radius of the project site so that it can become a sustainable neighborhood again. That's the core idea: the project becoming a catalytic force in an urban core.

Can you walk us through how you designed the structures? Here at Dwell we're very friendly toward modern buildings but is that something where you received any pushback from the neighborhood? We were fortunate in terms of aesthetics in that we had a historical building and we laid out from the very start if we have to do new construction, our boss is a modernist at heart and we would propose contemporary housing options as opposed to what I'll call "imitation crab meat." We didn't want to try and recreate the beautiful architecture that was completed over 100 years ago because it would always just look fake. That being said, we wanted a contemporary design and looked to the neighborhood for scale, materiality, color palette, and other elements in terms of the architecture and walking the community though the process coupled with the big idea and vision, we didn't get as much resistance as one would have anticipated. But because the process was very transparent it worked out really well. We have this nice contrast of old and new.

The project's core is near a school that was empty for the past 13 years. Is vacancy an issue in the area as well? How did you select the project site? In the neighborhood, Manheim Park, 30 percent of the area for contains vacant lots or dangerous buildings. One block west of Troost it's much much different—maybe five percent vacant if that. We knew that we wanted it to be adjacent to public transportation nodes, we knew that we wanted it to be of a scale of existing buildings or of new construction, and we knew that we wanted to be part of a community that needed a hand up instead of a hand out. And all of that analysis lead to a couple of different sites in the Green Impact Zone. We went into GIS and mapped buildings over 10,000 square feet and transit nodes and then we overlaid vacant properties and the Bancroft just kind of emerged out of that mapping process. And we said, ok, the Bancroft school is one block away from rapid transit, it's one block from mixed-use retail that could be revitalized. It had the proper zoning, it had the proper access, it had a big enough scale building to be a catalyst and to be a visionary from the start. If we're going to walk out and be the first project in the area, we had to make a loud bang.

Texas. The Cricket Trailer, made in Houston, can sleep up to two adults and two children. With integrated fresh water and greywater tanks along with a water heater, campers can live off-the-grid in the easily towable unit.

The nonprofit Make It Right, which is planning to build 20 LEED Platinum prefabs for tribe members at the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana in conjunction with Method Homes, unveiled their show home at Dwell Outdoor. The interior is decorated with Native American art that will be part of an online auction with proceeds going to Make It Right.

Come tour the @makeitright_9 show home by @methodhomes at #DODLA! The home was built for the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana, where it is headed after the show.

The price is right.

“Gatherings here can be a very rich experience, a dis-cussion around art history, music, food, and fashion.”—Kenneth Montague

"I thought the building should be repaired and basically not changed," Judd said in 1989. "The given circumstances were very simple: the floors must be open; the right angle of windows on each floor must not be interrupted; and any changes must be compatible." While most of the building remains almost exactly as the artist left it, the Judd Foundation is now introducing special exhibitions on the first floor of 101 Spring. The first is Make art, not pipelines: Get in on the Ground Floor, which features two works by artist Dan Flavin and runs through September 19, 2015. Image © Judd Foundation; Photo credit: Maris Hutchinson, EPW Studio; Judd Foundation Archive; Flavin artwork © 2015 Stephen Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London; Licensed by VAGA

In the tiled master bathroom, the boys get their own sink.

Referencing the motif in the kitchen, wood slats also appear on the rear facade of the home; the variegated cedar planks both modulate light and provide a bit of privacy (above).The garden floor, which accommodates an additional living area and office, also offers access to the backyard.

The home’s custom woodwork—including the movable furniture—was made by Orana Joinery and finished with plywood. Chemisys Group supplied the timber door and window finishes, as well as the timber deck outside.

Architect Stefano Girodo explains the building has a “completely prefabricated and modular structure.” It was built using recyclable and environmentally friendly materials and designed to ensure easy mechanical assembly once on site.

Gaps and openings between the handle-less, white oak shelves are functional and decorative, holding plants, books, and office supplies. Small touches, such as the matching color of the chair and the lower shelves, help accent the clean white surfaces.

the reflectivity of the brass kitchen island makes it seem to dematerialize.

Manual Coffee Maker The first entry in his new Manual houseware lines, the MCM exemplifies Berman’s approach, slowly crafting products at the intersection of design and food.

There are no paints, lacquers, or polyurethane finishes used anywhere in the house. Indoors and out, the materials were kept simple: The exterior walls and roof are oiled ipe, selected for its hardness and weather resistance.

Jimena makes use of a giant chalkboard just outside.

The screen around the lanai is made from extrene, a material used by the military for radio towers. The welded-steel sculpture, set atop a pile of a’a rocks, was made by Craig.

White prefabricated cabinets and countertops make for a streamlined kitchen.

After an unprecedented year of earthquakes, hurricanes, and fires, a bright light has been shed on the benefits of building with concrete.

The staircase acts as both room divider and main storage. The stair “carpet” is made from the same tough rubber that is used to make tires for semis.

The Outward Bound cabins, designed by the University of Colorado Denver's design-build program, have steel frames that lift the structures above a three-foot snowpack while supporting corrugated-steel "snow roofs."

“It was a natural choice,” says Adrian of using reclaimed and rescued wood. “I didn’t want to chop down a whole lot of trees.” The walls and ceiling are lined with planks of butternut harvested from diseased trees in Vermont.

Ready Made Curtain hanging system by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, produced by Kvadrat A/S.

For Afghan Made, Wallpaper paired modern rug companies with manufacturers from Afghanistan as a way to jumpstart the industry.

Made in the Future New manufacturing ecologies and the increased ability to make goods ourselves could lead to exceptional customization and new ideas, according to an new IDEO report.

Designed for MatterMade, the ADA Quilt is an expression of Oklahoma-raised designer Meg Callahan’s love of traditional craft, updated for the modern era. Bold graphic patterning is digitally printed on an organic cotton base with machine stitch overlay. The result is a seamless blend of the digital and handmade to create a fresh take on an age-old textile.

Urbangreen selected walnut wood coated in a clear, low-VOC finish for the custom bunk beds. "It brings out the natural beauty and detail of of the grain," says Elias Didaskalou of Urbangreen. "The materials used not only had to look good, but also had to ensure durability and longevity. Sustainability for Urbangreen, along with lowering our carbon footprint, also means handcrafting pieces that last a lifetime: Non-disposable furniture that will not end up in a landfill."

Using scrap material from the kitchen cabinets and island, Stern and Chamblin created custom bedside tables that support a lamp by Seattle designer Brent Markee.

Chairs made from the seats of a Ferrari BB 512 face the tower’s large window, which overlooks the sea