People from the two cultures are gradually coming to understand each other. And the DesignBuild collaboration will become more well-known soon, when Dwell magazine includes the Rosie Joe house in its "living off the grid" issue. Rosie Joe's house was the first one the U. students built on the reservation, back in 2004.

The guiding principle of Joe's house was the butterfly roof for water collection, Louis explains. The large unattached roof also shades the home's real roof and keeps the house cool.

If you visit Joe on a hot summer afternoon, you'll find her sitting in comfort at a loom in the corner of her living room. Joe loves her 1,200-square-foot home, with its exposed pipes and unadorned concrete. She also loves the fact that the students who built it regularly come back to check on her, even though they've long since graduated and gone on with their lives.

This year, one of her straw-bale walls sagged, and the former students replaced it. McComb, who was one of the original group that built her house, is now in charge of maintaining all the homes. He came by recently and replaced the water pump on her cistern.

Joe says she loves living in this peaceful place, a half mile from the nearest telephone, in a home made of earth. And if you visit the third home the students built, you'll find Caroline Lameman is equally pleased with her house and with the ongoing maintenance.

Because she lived in Denver for years before moving back to the reservation, Lameman is used to conversing with Anglos. Louis said she was not shy about sharing her dreams with the students who designed her home. As a result she, too, has a hogan shape in half her house — as well as a small library nook and a window seat and an entryway made of rock.

Unfortunately, she does not have electricity and her house was not designed to be off the grid. Lameman doesn't know whether Rocky Mountain Power or the Navajo Nation is responsible for the hold-up. And so if you drop by her house, you'll find she's currently staying with her elderly parents, who live a few hundred yards from her home in a prefabricated house with air conditioning.

Louis says he's sure she'll get electricity. Lameman understands the importance of reminding the government. "It's no different than our society," Louis says. "If you go to the meetings every week you'll get taken care of before the people who don't go."

Design/build programs were not at all common when Louis started the one at the U. seven years ago. Although they are becoming popular, they are still a rarity in architecture schools, he says. As for funding, most design/build programs are like the one at Yale, where the college sells the house rather than giving it away.