Consulting

HANDBUILT is the consulting brand of Nat M. Zorach, AICP, MBA. I am a strategist, journalist, and city planner with deep expertise in multiple facets of the built environment, sustainability, and decarbonization. I also have a strong track record in ideating, developing, and managing complex partnerships, stakeholder relationships, and organizational frameworks to facilitate equitable economic and community development. Handbuilt has, at various times, employed part-time, full-time, and contracted labor, but these days it’s just yours truly plus some close co-conspirators.

*Imagined Victorian homes on a historic street in your local rust belt metropolis.*

The History and the Name

HANDBUILT refers to the notion that our world, the built environment, and the solutions in it, are all, at a fundamental level, crafted by human hands. We often forget this in our pursuit of high-minded theory, abstract modeling, and, most generally, coming up with ideas in isolation, rather than collaboration. The name itself was coined in 2011 thinking about Rust Belt community development projects that were cleverly engineered by financial wizards in an office through complex capital stacks, but situated in a desert of information, training, or human engagement, and which either caused them to fail spectacularly or simply fail to live up to their full potential. Similarly, when we’re thinking about sustainability, we often get to the “planet” and “profit” part much faster than we get to the “people” part.

This is why equitable decarbonization is such a vital goal: Handbuilt is driven by the notion that can improve our economic and financial systems by encouraging decisionmakers to take into account access, equity, and collaboration, rather than simply gestural reference to these things alongside technically clever, but socially ineffectual or bland solutions. The name is a suggestion to recognize the role we can all play, whether as technicians, managers, or even dreamers or artists– in the creation of a new societal tapestry: one where each brick and each blueprint is imbued with a conscientious commitment to ecological resilience and social equity.

*The Handbuilt City offers consulting services related to construction and design.*

What I’ve Worked On In The Past

As a journalist with a city planning degree, an MBA, and an occasional carpenter, I enjoy working on things that solve and scale complex problems of the built environment, focusing chiefly on sustainable innovation and development. I can tell you as much about residential wiring systems (concrete, micro level) as I can about load shaping in the PJM (abstract, big picture). Past projects have included everything ranging from designing from scratch multi-million dollar community development programs, to working on one-off proposals to renovate historic buildings. I’ve supported ambitious historic preservation efforts in cities ranging from Philadelphia to Minneapolis.

Accompanying my MBA capstone (and tens of thousands of blog articles on the subject), I also wrote an entire master’s thesis on the future of transportation systems as far as how public-private partnerships can be used at the intersection of energy distribution and transportation infrastructure systems.

Core to my mission is figuring out how to adapt systems of natural and human origin to work with one another. This means understanding that technology is a tool, but not a goal in and of itself, while also recognizing that people and nature both work within systems. This is a concept rendering of green stormwater infrastructure integrated into a site plan for an institutional project.

Work has also included:

Academic research, survey design and data analysis, and statistical modeling. I’m a highly skilled writer and researcher in both qualitative and quantitative forms, an expert in the art of the legible spreadsheet, and a big fan of quality data visualization. If analysis is too sophisticated for me, I’ve got people for that.

Energy and sustainability strategy: I’ve helped companies develop plans to offset and reduce carbon footprint, and to reduce impact, through facilities management, fleet management, and site maintenance and design work (especially for green stormwater infrastructure and native landscaping to offset drainage issues or impact fees). I’ve helped companies strategize about material sourcing, procurement standards, and design to meet sustainability goals, and I’ve also (previously under BPI and RESNET certifications, and working with partners) provided energy audits for residential and multifamily buildings.

Communications & outreach strategy. I like talking to people, and I also like figuring out how to reach people, especially if it involves building partnerships and rallying consensus, even around topics on which consensus may seem elusive.

Using cutting-edge technologies like Matterport, drones, and videography to create immersive digital environments, tell stories about place, and create broader access to spaces that might be forgotten or otherwise missed. This covers everything ranging from real estate listings to community-led historic preservation projects.

Using and writing about artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney AI, and more, especially to understand the murky territory between transformative technological innovation and the bleeding edge of new technology.

Green stormwater infrastructure is an important element of sustainable urban design, because it increases biodiversity, decreases strain on storm sewers and especially combined sewers, reduces the incidence of neighborhood and basement flooding, and, importantly, because it looks pretty! GSI also absorbs a lot of carbon, which is a highly valuable alternative to the tired paradigm of manicured lawns.

I’ve worked with clients ranging from community nonprofits to Ford Motor Company (on the transformative Michigan Central Station project, which is a short walk from my home in Southwest Detroit). I piloted and successfully excited a experimental crowdfunding model to facilitate investment in distressed inner city real estate in 2011-2013, oversaw the acquisition and build-out of multiple real estate portfolios ranging from scattered-site residential to industrial adaptive reuse in multiple cities (2012-2017), and have assisted municipal and community stakeholders in solving complex regulatory hurdles in sustainable neighborhood development. I’ve also worked tirelessly to advocate for inner city communities in which I’ve lived since moving to St. Louis in 2010 before settling in Detroit (since 2015), contributing to transportation policy and infrastructure advocacy, environmental justice initiatives, and novel strategies and models for financing residential development and mortgage lending.

*Technology like Matterport can create a digital twin of a space, which can be used for marketing, outreach, education, training, or even for planning construction and design.*

Matterport, Videography, & Drone Photography

I’m committed to figuring out how to improve the ergonomics, efficiency, and legibility of the built environment. Matterport has proven a strong tool for this as it can scan, creating floor plans and point cloud data sets while also building an immersive digital environment, whether for marketing purposes, education, or other outreach. I’ve also provided videography for video tours, drone photography, and more. I’ve done this for projects like my acclaimed virtual tour of the Michigan Central Station project for Ford Motor Company, completed in phases from September 2020 to March 2021, for historic preservation projects, for major capital projects, and for small renovation jobs and even energy audits.

Get in touch!

What are you dreaming about? What’s keeping you up at night? Shoot me an e-mail at nathaniel dot handbuiltcity dot org, or reach out on Twitter or Facebook.

matterport plan view — *Matterport plan view of the first floor of the Michigan Central Station project by Ford.*

Résumé

If you’re interested in checking out my résumé, have a look below!

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