Annapolis, Md, 10/24/2011. For most of the month of September, Halpern Architects was devoted to producing a new home design for the TV show, Extreme Makeover Home Edition. This Extreme Makeover Home brings to fruition many of the goals of the year long collaboration between Halpern Architects and Fusion Custom homes.

                A little over a year ago, Wes Sims, president of Fusion Custom Homes contacted Halpern Architects about meeting to develop a long term design-build relationship. What is unusual about Fusion Custom Homes is that Fusion specializes in environmentally sensitive, custom, modular homes, which at first hearing sounds like an oxymoron.  That first meeting has led to a valuable working relationship with Fusion, and our on-going great adventure designing the home for Extreme Makeover Home Edition (EMHE).

The Extreme Home: 

                Extreme Makeover Homes always start with the family, in this case a family of four; a mother, her sister, and two teenage children. The son had experienced a tragic loss, and yet had shown inspirational courage and a continued commitment to his community. The family had struggled on modest means to maintain their small home located near the town of Mardela Springs. The home had been in their family for several generations but decades of deferred maintenance had taken a toll on the structure of the home and the house had never had proper electrical, plumbing and heating systems.  The plan was to replace it with a new home.              

                With very little warning, Fusion Custom Homes was informed that they were selected by Extreme Makeover Home Edition to be the builder for an episode scheduled to air in January of 2012. Fusion had been in talks with Extreme Makeover Home Edition, self-identified as EMHE, about an episode that would be constructed during the summer of 2012 and aired in the fall. But suddenly Fusion had six weeks to assemble a team to design, supply, and construct the home. Wes Sims turned to Halpern Architects as his first choice to design the home and provide back up logistics. 

The Team:

                Fusion and Halpern Architects had collaborated on several successful, custom, factory-built homes together. But beyond the actual homes which had been constructed, the two firms had been exploring ways of producing architecturally refined homes that offered a blend of energy efficiency, low maintenance, reasonable construction costs, efficient floor plans, and a minimized carbon footprint. 

                Prior to their association with Fusion, Alan Cook, LEED-AP and Associate Architect with Halpern Architects, and Jeffrey Halpern, Principal Architects had long held a reputation for high quality architecture which also was consistent their commitment to environmentally sensitive homes. Fusion Custom Homes’ mission was to provide custom, innovative, factory constructed, sustainable homes. 

                This joint exploration had lead to preliminary concept studies for a prototype which could demonstrate these concepts.  The Extreme Makeover home seemed like the perfect platform to demonstrate the basic concepts that came out of the prototype concept studies while adapting them to the actual needs of the Extreme Family. 

                In weighing the option of commitment of Halpern Architects to donating its services within the show’s intensive timeline, Jeff Halpern, Principal Architect at Halpern Architects was swayed by an off-hand comment that Fusion’s Wes Sims made to him during the very first phone call about the show. Ending Wes’s description of the process, timeline and the commitment required, Wes said, “Besides any other consideration, this is a very good thing that we will be doing.” The sentence, “This is a very good thing” became the mantra that kept everyone moving ahead during all of the daily dramatic ups-and-downs entailed in any Extreme Makeover Project.  

The Concept:

                In preparation for the charrette that produced the design, the team at Fusion and Halpern Architects had been sent an EMHE video that introduced the family and were permitted a brief site visit. 

                As a result, the team had concluded that the design would be a 2,000 square foot, four-bedroom, two-bath home. The goal was to keep the volume of the house small so that heating and cooling loads could be kept to a minimum which meant that room sizes were compact, but comfortable. Circulation was minimized. The roofs were to be oriented to maximize clear sky and optimized orientation to allow a sufficient number of photovoltaic solar panels to allow the house to produce as much, or perhaps even more electricity than it actually used. 

                Siding systems and other construction components were chosen for low maintenance and low carbon footprint, as well as speed and ease of installation. The modular aspect of the project allowed a higher quality control level, waste to be minimized, and allowed construction to begin before the “Door Knock”, that emblematic moment when a family finds out that they have been selected.  

Reality meets Reality TV: 

                Everything associated with Extreme Makeover happens very quickly. By necessity the basic design process literally happens in one day, and that day was scheduled less than a week after Halpern Architects found out that we would providing the architecture. At the end of that day, the design needed to be sufficiently detailed to permit all of the cabinetry and plumbing fixtures to be ordered less than three days later. In what was feared to be a bad omen, this EMHE build was designated 9:11, which in Extreme Makeover speak is season 9, episode 11. 

                True to that fear, the one day to develop the basic design was the day that Hurricane Irene struck Annapolis. The design session started around 7:00 a.m. and ran until nearly 2:00 a.m. the next morning. It started over again shortly after dawn that same morning, and ended when power was lost and the laptop’s batteries finally died. 

                From the beginning, Fusion and Halpern Architects had a basic set of goals and corresponding design concepts in mind. This plan should have produced a home which should have been quick to draw, easy to construct, and inexpensive to build and operate. Our team thought we had a plan, but this was TV. 

                At the start of the one-day design session, the Design Producer assigned to 9:11, began by adding spaces, and setting the minimum room sizes and ceiling heights that were necessary for the proper camera angles and ‘to tell the story’. This was the first of many design decisions that were driven by the needs of the show rather than by the long term needs of the family. In the balancing act between creating a good home vs. creating good entertainment, good entertainment usually won out. 

The other ‘surprise’ design driver was the specific materials and labor which were actually donated. Almost every bit of an Extreme Makeover Home is donated, and to some extent these houses are exercises in designing around the donated ‘found objects’. The design may start out with one building method and material in mind, but the realities of who steps up to the plate and stays there, dictates the actual way that the house is ultimately designed and constructed. 

                On any given day,  Halpern Architects might start out to develop a roof design that works with donated components from a company that produces S.I.P.’s (structural insulated panel) roof systems and end the day searching for some source, any source, that will actually provide a roof system of any kind. 

                The roof shape and height may have originated with the needs of the solar panels, and the interior volumes which were desired, and end up being driven by the lack of volunteer carpenters, the need to keep water out of the finished interiors during a 106 hour construction cycle in the middle of Maryland’s rainy season, the one truss manufacturer willing to take on fabrication with three days notice (but only if the roof design is simplified as much as possible), the presence or lack of availability of rubber roofing, or the requirement to use the specific roof shingles marketed by one of the show’s sponsors.   

                Or, perhaps during the build, you might walk into the house and find the fireplace mounted four feet off the floor. Inquiring about this apparent mistake you are told that because of the need for drama during the ‘discovery shot’, the camera needs to be at a certain height as it ‘walks through’ the house and if mounted normally the back of the sofa would block the fireplace. 

                But somehow it all worked out. The new home is 2,700 square feet. The interior spaces are inviting and spatially interesting. It is oriented to maximize available sunlight on the PV solar panel arrays. It should be efficient to heat and cool and easy to maintain. And somehow Fusion and their volunteers were able to construct it in 106 hours.   

Where we are going next?
                Once we recover from the lost sleep, Fusion Custom Homes and Halpern Architects plan to review the lessons learned doing the Extreme Home. We believe that our original concept for an energy efficient, low maintenance, low carbon footprint, modular home still works. 

We believe that even outside of the high-speed environment of an Extreme Home Build, modular construction really offers a lot of advantages in terms of quality control, cost savings, and short build time. We have had a number of inquiries about custom versions of this concept and so we are starting to develop a ‘standard model’, which is based on the principles developed for the Extreme Makeover house.…..

And if nothing else, I firmly believe “We did a very good thing!” 
               
Jeffrey Halpern
 Halpern Architects

 914 Forest Drive- Suite 202
 Annapolis, Maryland 21403
 JHalpern@HalpernArchitects.com

410 263 1909 Voice
443 223 5453 Mobile
410 280 2542 Facsimile

Wyzhir Johnson's grandmother, MomMom Pooch, shares a few words with Jennifer Cochran of Branches PSP on the site of The Fusion Companies' Extreme Makeover Home Edition project, designed by architect Jeff Halpern of Halpern Architects in Annapolis, Maryland.


The Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was an amazing project for a terrific family! We would love to do another one (once we catch up on sleep from this one!) 

Please check our website and blog out frequently for these exclusive videos, photographs, and stories from the project.

Thank you & God bless!

Shawn Cochran
Owner, Branches PSP

Branches would like to send a warm shout out of thanks to Nuala O’Leary, of Long & Foster Realty! 

We had never met Nuala before she reached out to us to offer her time and support for the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Annapolis Kick Off Party Silent Auction & Fundraiser. And, what an essential volunteer she was!


 Nuala stepped up in a big way to help collect and coordinate auction items. And, she took it upon herself to contact folks who were winning bidders. When the event was over and our team had relocated to the build site, she even took time out of her day to meet people with their items at the Fusion offices. 


 Nuala embodies the spirit of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and the Branches PSP mission for community involvement. And for this, we send her a huge THANK YOU!

PS : If you're looking for a realtor, call Nuala O’Leary!

We donated the other day. 

Watching the community (businesses, citizens) come together and work this project TOGETHER has been amazing. Our community needed something like this to remind us of what this area is all about. 

This family is very deserving, many heartbreaks have been endured. And the grandpop is a Vietnam Veteran. This is just a small thank you for that man's time served for our country. 

Lets Bring It!
D