6 minute read
Cristian Johnston
Christian Johnston
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Q. Tell everyone who you are and what you do?
A. I had a very long and fruitful career as a writer, director, and producer on feature films, television, and documentaries.
It led me to many places around the world from building a life-size space station in the castle in
Prague with Russian Electronics, to handling complicated logistics in Morocco and Lebanon. I spent a few months in the Arctic working closely with government officials in Norway while producing and directing Time Magazine’s first documentary. The conversation overlapped in many ways with the same problems in so many places around the world: how do we quickly create affordable housing that can be independent by creating its own power and water, and processing its own waste?
How do we find or train next level of technicians quickly, inexpensively and at mass scale?
These essential questions led to many conversations and brainstorming sessions for solutions around sustainability and advancing sustainable economies.
Living in Los Angeles, the housing crisis is very real for everyone in California. The homelessness issue has escalated at such a frightening pace that my team members and I realized we must try to apply our skills to try and help bring solutions and create fast-moving, affordable, and sustainable housing. This has been a 15-year side-project of research of all of the possible solutions in this space that finally led us to formalize the task five years ago. Some of our early prototypes in the Hurricaneravaged Caribbean and povertystricken communities of Los Angeles ended up becoming the blueprint for A Bridge Home, an emergency homeless shelter initiative by the state. These jump-started, high-level government conversations in many areas helped us realize that our independent filmmaker mentality combined with dozens of experts that provided support and mentorship in this space has led us to where we are today.
Looking at problems from the outside-in is a major aspect of being able to solve major issues. Plans fail for lack of council, so I always felt it was just as critical to have more than a dozen experts and mentors on board as our business plans we’re being formed. It also is very unique in that dozens, if not hundreds, of housing manufacturing solutions are needed in order to make a dent in the homelessness crisis. It is also a very critical opportunity to deploy all the most cuttingedge sustainable technology implemented into every building. This process has taken years and we are very excited about what we have created.
Q. Tell us about “ARCspace” and the motivation behind it?
A. ARCspace provides innovative, rapidly-delivered, low-cost steel modular buildings that include cutting-edge sustainable technology as well as gridindependent water, power, and waste solution.
Our proprietary prefabricated units are sized similar than shipping containers for efficient, cost-effective transport and to enable infinite configurability - but make no mistake, these are tremendously different from ‘upcycled’ or ‘recycled’ shipping containers that are often contaminated. Our prefab modular units are new,
structurally superior, welded with high-grade steel, contain 50-80% recycled or sustainable materials, and are designed to withstand anything nature sends your way. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and fires ravage an already desperate affordable/homeless housing market nationally. When we factor in the astounding increases in building material costs and skilled labor shortages, our unprecedented affordable/homeless housing crisis reaches epidemic proportions. Our world is facing a new pandemic, and millions more seek affordable housing or homeless shelters. Housing is everything.
One of the most critical things in the world is being able to get into an affordable housing unit. Affordable housing can become one of the greatest wealth builders or destroyers in anyone’s life. It’s not just the accumulation of wealth, but it’s also about pride. Without access to affordable housing it is more likely for someone to be forced to build wealth via other methods that might harm others or the environment. Ultimately, that is not the path to happiness. Housing affordability is so critical because it touches almost every aspect of equity and quality of life. In far too many cities around the world, families are paying 50-60% of their income on rent. Mortgages are out of reach for most, so therefore people are trapped in a lose-lose cycle. Creating pathways to supply sits at the heart of what we do because it is one of the single most critical epicenters of fixing solves most of today’s most pressing issues.
Q. What are your top 5 Values?
A. Honesty, Hard Work,
Compassion, Dedication &
Putting greater good above the self.
Q. How do you define your purpose in life?
A. I deeply value taking what skills
I have of the most value and applying 18 hours a day of hard work to making the world a better place. In the last few years, my purpose has been to fundamentally change a broken system to help sustainably, affordably house as many people as possible. Next, we will be shooting a documentary series around some of these most exciting adventures.
Q. What is the best piece of advice you ever received?
A. A very successful hotel designer and builder once said: “‘Ready,
Fire, Aim’ is not a bad thing. Living life white-boarding will get you nowhere.”
Q. If you can go anywhere in the world where would it be?
A. I am excited to be starting on a project in East Africa related to drought and education with our systems. I’ll get to visit a place I’ve always wanted to help and learn from culturally.
Q. What motivates you to do your best every day?
A. I love seeing the thousands of people who tour our projects, many of them coming to tears to witness an affordable housing solution.
Seeing the hope in their eyes because of our hard work is unmatched.
Q. Tell is one fun fact about yourself?
A. I have been lucky enough to work in and travel to almost 100 countries!
Q. Are you working on any new events or upcoming projects?
A. We have been asked by highlevel elected officials and HUD in Washington D.C. to explore different models for housing. I am excited by some of our new projects that we think will pave the way for the communities of the future - the types of communities that people want, built for the post-pandemic world where people will live differently.
ARC1 is a project’s of ours set to redefine what we know about California’s density and gridindependent abilities within the new California state legislation with hopes to find alternative use of unused temporary and permanent sites to support what could be a historic eviction crisis on top of an already exasperated affordable housing crisis exasperated by COVID-19 and economic stress. In the San Francisco Bay Area, elected officials and our partners at a few local universities are designing a series of co-living communities where four to eight separate bedrooms are combined with a central living area, kitchen, etc. Some Bay Area cities are promoting the idea of taxing vacant land sites unless they deploy temporary or permeant housing. Our pilot projects are rapidly installed and will share the cost of sustainable resources. They will also show how to temporarily use sites while larger projects still in the planning process, availing the affordable inventory needs immediately. These rapid response solutions seek
to show the world fast-acting solutions, clean technology, and job training (residents will have a hand in many aspects of the build and maintenance of the co-living community). We expect to be deploying as many as 400 housing units per month across these sorts of important launchpad endeavors. Housing is a human right. I hope the corporations that helped create the housing crisis will rise to the occasion and be a part of the solution.
Q. Where can the readers follow you?
A. Our website will be giving regular updates: www.ARCspace.io
