A new community garden is being designed on a site at the intersection of Sheriff Road, NE and 48th Street, NE in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington DC’s Ward 7. It is a joint project between Parsons, the New School for Design, the District of Columbia’s Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), and our non-profit partner Groundwork Anacostia River DC (GWARDC). The once empty lot will be transformed into a beautiful gathering space that will serve all generations of the Deanwood community.

The Deanwood Learning Garden is part

of the larger Solar Decathlon Deanwood project currently underway on Gault Place NE. Both the garden site and the Solar Decathlon site are owned by the District of Columbia through DHCD. The Learning Garden is a community-based partnership which empowers people, businesses and organizations to promote long term sustainable growth and community, while also revitalizing underserved communities in the District of Columbia.

The Deanwood Learning Garden will be designed with a combination of landscaped and planted areas and open areas for

New Deanwood Learning Garden

April 2011

Parsons The New School for Design | Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy | Stevens Institute of TechnologyIn Partnership with Habitat for Humanity | Deanwood Community | Government of DC

community cultural events. Called a ”Learning Garden,” the garden will provide opportunities for local residents to participate in planting initiatives, food-growing opportunities and provide a venue for community events. This project is a recognition of the importance of gardens in communities as venues to promote community building, to educate children about the importance of healthy living and support the principles of sustainability within communities. It will also offer a much needed outdoor gathering space for families where parents can watch their kids learn to play chess and run through labyrinths of plants. Outfitted with a stage it can act as a venue for all types of entertainment, with an audience capacity of over a hundred.

During the spring, design for the garden will be completed and planting will begin with work ongoing at the site until the fall. The object of this collaborative project is to launch the garden, build community support and transfer maintenance of the garden to local groups.

Empowerhouse is the New School entry in the 2011 Solar Decathlon, an international biennial competition to build and operate solar-powered homes for exhibition on the National Mall. Empowerhouse has taken the competition beyond the judging at the National Mall, as students and faculty are working with Habitat for Humanity and the District of Columbia to turn their demonstration house into a permanent home in the District’s Deanwood Communty.

April 2011

The relationship built with Deanwood via the Solar Decathlon has resulted in the development of “outside the competition” projects, as the capacity to make a deeper impact in the community beyond the houses was realized. One such project is the upcoming Workshop Series: Save Energy, Save Money Workshops- Greening Greater Deanwood. These workshops will provide a forum for interaction on green living topics, as well as provide expert advice on how to reduce your environmental footprint while saving money. Workshop leaders will include locally and nationally renowned professionals in the field of sustainable development and green living. Each workshop consists of experts focusing on the immediate steps participants can take to move towards sustainability with regard to a specific topic, such as solar panels, water maintenance, and heating/cooling. The first two workshops of the series will be held at IDEA Public Charter School

on April 2nd and 16th from 11:00 to 2:00 pm. Those interested can check out up to date information including future dates and speakers, as the workshops will continue through the spring and summer! Admission is free, and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Past workshops and topics are:

April 2nd - The “Green Ward, Green Life” with Lisa Crawford, President of Capitol Business Solutions LLC

Upcoming dates and topics are:

April 16th - Water Recycling & Smart Water Management with Dennis Chestnut, Executive Director of Groundworks Anacostia River, D.C. & Parsons The New School for Design

More upcoming workshops in June!

Community Meetings in Deanwood

Next Workshop:“Water Reycling and Smart Water Management”

with Dennis Chestnut Executive Director of Groundwork Anacostia River, D.C

Dennis Chestnut is the founding Executive Director of Groundwork Anacostia River DC (GWARDC), a non-profit business committed to improving the community’s physical landscape through tangible projects. Born in Washington, DC and raised in the Hillbrook neighborhood of Ward 7 where he and his family lives. A vocational educator, master carpenter, lead citizen forester, community organizer and nonprofit board member and Anacostia watershed steward. A lover of nature and works to connect people to the outdoors.

Deanwood Recipe Book We are assembling recipes for "The Deanwood Recipe" book, a compilation of local recipes from Deanwood residents. If you would like to contribute a recipe contact Emily Kerns kernsemily@gmail.com and she would be happy to include your recipe in the book. Thank you.

Lederer Youth Garden, located in the Deanwood community of Ward 7, is a place where DC residents grow food and expand their knowledge of the surrounding environment. Adults who rent plots at Lederer grow food for their families, while food grown in other plots is largely donated to Capital Area Food Bank and DC Central Kitchen. The facility is run by the DC Department of Parks and Recreation and is equipped with both a Garden and Education Center. The Garden is nearly an acre in size, and consists of 40 children’s plots and 20 adult plots (10’x12’). Currently, the Lederer facility has a beehive, a covered picnic pavilion, a greenhouse, and a computer lab.

This year, students from the Parsons/NS/Stevens Empowerhouse will be building a solar powered two family housing at Gault Place in the Deanwood area just one

block west of the Lederer Garden. The design strategy developed by students uses solar energy in many ways, including the solar energy to grow food. Students are designing an easy to use “food loop” for the house, incorporating elements like, seed window boxes, roof top planters and arbors, and composting units. In order for the house’s food loop to be complete, students have identified the fact that is also needs to intersect with neighborhood scale food outlets like the Lederer Garden and local Green Markets. The sphere of the resident’s home extends into the city.

To promote this integration between house and community, students are proposing two mutually beneficial collaborative projects with Lederer. Look for us in the garden on April 22nd!

Lederer Youth Garden Collaboration

Look for us in the garden April 22nd!We will be planting vegetables in the garden for the competition in August.

April 2011

Since 2002, the Department of Energy has sponsored four rounds of an international competition between selected universities called the Solar Decathlon, www.solardecathlon.org. The event challenges students to conduct advanced research, design and build a “net zero” exposition house using only the power of the sun.

The Empowerhouse project brings together students and faculty from Parsons The New School for Design, Milano the New School for Management and Urban Policy, and Stevens Institute of Technology with Habitat for Humanity of Washington DC and the Deanwood neighborhood in Ward 7. The collaboration sets up an opportunity to work innovatively on housing design, energy conservation, and urban policy concepts in a way that will take the solar decathlon project to a whole new level. With “out of the box” thinking, we can begin to dream of a scenario, one year from today, where two brand-new single-family homes in Deanwood offer two working-class DC families an opportunity to live in a comfortable home where they pay little

to no utilities, breathe clean air, and the rainwater that falls on their homes is used to grow vegetables that protect the house and help sustain the family.

For the last twenty years, Habitat for Humanity of Washington DC has been doing great things for moderate to low-income families living in the Nation’s Capital. More than 100 houses have been built in an effort to provide affordable housing and to contribute to the lives of our neighbors by giving them a simple, decent place to live with homeownership opportunities.

Parsons students will draw upon their broad art and design strengths and adopt a whole-life approach that takes into account everything from the clothing residents wear to the food they eat. This approach will include tackling design problems that range from the scale of the body to the scale of the city. The Stevens students will bring elegant state of the art technological solutions and the Milano students will provide community support and outreach.

The goal of the collaborative team is to design two homes. One house will be built on a site in the Deanwood neighborhood. The other house will initially be displayed on the National Mall in DC, as part of the Solar Decathlon competition. At the conclusion of the competition the Mall structure will join its mate on the site in Deanwood to create a two single family homes.

April 2011

We would like to hear from you.

Write to us atEmpowerhouse Collaborativec/o Parsons The New School for Design25 E. 13th Street, Floor 2New York City, NY 10013info@empowerhouse-dc.org

For press/media inquiries Email us at communications@newschool.edu

Or, give us a call at 212.229.5667, extension 5151

Thanks to Sylvia Brown, ANC-7C04.

Project Partners

We have a common vision to design a

comfortable, resilient, beautiful place to live

for a family in a strong community that believes in

the values of self-reliance and quality of life.

— Empowerhouse Collaborative