Continuation into the Summer

At the end of April, May 21st was a dark and looming date. That was the day I was to leave Monterrey and return to Indiana. I was not ready to leave Mexico for good. I was not ready to leave Mexico for more than a few days. I wanted to stay and keep working on projects and keep working on Spanish. After a long search, I finally was able to receive some funding to continue working on the design of the prototype home and strategic plan of San Felipe, the small ejido village that I have written about several times. So after a brief trip to my home state, I returned to Monterrey on June 1 and have been here since then.

The work I have been doing has mainly been focused on finishing the details of the prototype home so that construction can resume. This involves the design, determining which materials will be used and the amount of the materials, and figuring out ways to construct the house. This has been very interesting for me. In the semester of Fall 2007, I had a studio project which was to design a medical center for a rural part of Nepal which was very far from any major cities or building supply areas. The traditional walls of the area were stone and earth. I had the layout part of the design covered, but even after 5 years of school I could not understand how the thing would actually be built. These were materials that I had never worked with and had no idea how a wall made of such materials would actually stand up. Today the situation is different. After many visits to the village and after speaking with people who have worked with such materials, I can honestly say I know how 90% of this building will be constructed (there are a few more details that I will be working out this coming week). I have never been so confident in my knowledge of the constructibility of a building I have been working on as now. It has been very rewarding taking all the things I learned from working with details at Schmidt Associates in Indianapolis for three internships and applying that knowledge to new materials.

The second part of the summer work involves a strategic plan of the community in the next 10 years. My job for this is mainly to put together images which will start the process as five weeks (the length of my extended stay) is too short to do the construction details and a completed strategic plan. So this is what I have been up to since I last wrote many weeks ago.