If You Build It

In 2010, Superintendent of Public Schools for Bertie County, Chip Zullinger (1951–2014) had been hired to address the school district's serious shortcomings. the curriculum "empowered young people to become creative problem solvers and at the same time encourage them to become more active citizens." Variety quoted Pilloton-Lam, saying the project's purpose was to "plant small seeds in our students that years from now could result in a new kind of resource." with constructing water purifiers from clay and cow pies. After designing, constructing and selling corn hole boards, the students follow with full-scale chicken coops of their own design and culminate the year with the design and construction of an open-air farmer's market, which subsequently became known as the Windsor Super Market (depicted on the movie poster above, right). The project team and the community had identified a new farmer's market as a viable and desirable community project, and under the leadership of Pilloton-Lam and Miller the students focused on developing design and construction skills: critical thinking, research (e.g., analyzing Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House), sketching, and drafting, along with welding and real-world construction trades. Pilloton-Lam and Miller in turn completed construction documents and specifications, worked with a structural engineer and filed for construction permits – while also preparing and conducting three hours of daily classroom instruction. The film backtracks to tell the story of Matt Miller and his thesis project from the Cranbrook Academy, where he designed and constructed along with classmate Thomas Gardner a 900 sf, two-story infill house. The house was ultimately abandoned, leading Miller to conclude the project failed because the end-user was insufficiently engaged and invested in process. Together the Project H team identified student Stevie Mizelle's preliminary concept model to develop further, subsequently completing construction of the farmer's market to approximately 75% before the school year ended. The design features a large wood platform for vendor booths with vertical wood trusses supporting a rectilinear roofed canopy with wood slats designed to filter and control solar glare; a main floor at the same height above grade as a pickup truck bed, allowing vendors to back up to the "loading dock" at each vendor stall and walk their goods directly off their truck into their booth; and a long ramp at the front to allow pedestrian accessibility and to provide a symbolic front porch for visitors. Early in the school year, Pilloton-Lam and Miller chose to continue with the project after Zullinger, their prime backer, was dismissed by the school board, and the board became unwilling to underwrite the curriculum and withdrew their offered salaries. ==Background==

Prior to one-year Studio H curriculum in Bertie County, Pilloton-Lam and Miller had completed four architectural projects with the school board, as backed by Superintendent Zullinger: four playgrounds, three computer labs, a weight room for the football team, and a county-wide graphic campaign. Other tensions arose, and in a 2013 interview, Pilloton-Lam identified a racially and politically charged context that surrounded the curriculum and the project — describing Bertie County as a place where "hundreds of years of slavery and institutionalized racism is very much still alive and kicking." Pilloton-Lam had grown up near Mount Tamalpais, California, attributing the German toy Quadro with inspiring her interest in design. She later studied at the College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley and the Art Institute of Chicago, during a period when there was no curriculum but when there was a 100,000 sf shop class. Matt Miller was born in West Virginia and has architecture degrees from the University of Tennessee and Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has taught architecture and design at the Rhode Island School of Design, the College of Creative Studies, and UC Berkeley – and worked with Architecture for Humanity. Miller was the first student at the Cranbrook Academy to design and also build his thesis project (along with classmate Thomas Gardner): a 900 sf, two-story block infill house at 2126 Pierce Street in Poletown, Detroit. The house, ultimately abandoned, had a construction budget of $60,000 and used all-volunteer labor along with carefully selected materials (e.g., concrete block and rubber membrane roofing) to keep costs down. ==Reception==

As of mid-2014, the film had received a rating on Rotten Tomatoes of 78% favorable critic response based on 27 reviews, with an average score of 6.79/10. Architectural Record called the film "a document of America at its most vulnerable." ==Follow up==

Pilloton-Lam and Miller, who had been a couple, split up a staff of seven (paid) and 24 built projects around the country (as of mid 2014). Early in the film, student Stevie Mizelle – whose preliminary design for the farmer's market was ultimately selected by the team for design development – joked: "school, I hate it, my dad hated it, my granddaddy hated it. I'm carrying on a tradition." He currently studies animal behavior at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and made Dean's List his first year. Zullinger, widely described as ahead of his time, told Patrick Creadon, director of "If you Build it," he had been fired at least eight times and wore that as a badge of honor. Creadon described Zullinger as a "renegade school superintendent, a great thinker and a steamroller when it came to getting kids the education they deserve." ==References==