eco•pólitan: a better prototype for affordable housing

A couple of us visited Mireya and her family this past holiday season. We were excited to see how she was doing and whether she had found the ammenities that were included in the design of the house as useful as we had expected.

Mireya told us she had moved in Christmas Eve and she looked very happy to see us. During the time we spent with her, it seemed she could not find the right words to express to us her extreme gratitude. Instead, she found many others that, when combined, said it all.: “No saben cuanto les agradezco.” “Antes eramos pobres, ahora somos ricos.” “Muchas gracias.”

This was not something any of us could have expected. In my experience working in volunteer groups, I had never been involved in something that affected someone this strongly.

But this wasn’t the theme that any one of us who went back had in mind when we arrived. We were expecting to see the “hand of the architect” at work; the various passive energy solutions and techniques implemented had been so important to us that we had forgotten another aspect of this quite interdisciplinary field–sociology.

Mireya told us the house had been broken into, and that those who had broken in had stolen the metal parts of her stove. Her family helped her put up a fence and an addition to the southern part of the house. To our dismay, these additions caused changes in both the presentation of the front entrance of the house and the ventilation scheme. It could not have been more unsettling to see how much the physical structure of the house had changed.

When I arrived at home and looked at the pictures we took, I had a hard time finding the right set of emotions for what we had just experienced. As architects, some of us are trained to photograph the building, with no people present, such that the design say it all. Well, this time it was one of those non-architectural photos that had the last word. Mireya and her family could not possibly looked any happier. And no amount of “tweaking” of the architect’s vision could have offset the way I felt when I looked at this picture and remembered how our hard work will make their lives better.

To all the volunteers those who supported Eco-politani in this valiant effort, I hope this photograph and Mireya’s words do for you what they have done for me.

Our own Sam Vasquez was recently highlighted in the Sacramento Bee for Eco-politan’s work in Mexico! You can find full article by Bob Sylva at:

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/columns/
sylva/story/13958255p-14792506c.html

or click here:
Portraits: A Labor of Love

As today is Thanksgiving Day, I’d like take the time to thank all of our volunteers and sponsors again. Of everything we’ve been through, the thing I am most proud of is your dedication. And the thing I am most thankful for is the generosity of all our friends - for your time, your donations, and your hard work.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

This is a photo of the house as we left it Sunday, October 23. It was our last volunteer drive, a total of ten die-hards were there to hammer out the last of the punch list items. We finished the gypsum work,

and lime washes for the walls. Our compost privy finally received a good roof, door and compost bin. A big thanks to our master builder Primo.

We were also grateful to be able to build a small adobe porch floor in an hour before our 10 hour trek home. A special thanks to my brother Philip, as seen in the first photo working, for sacrificed his NFL Sunday for Eco-politan.

It was an awesome feeling packing up all our tools and doing a final walk through. Although we surpassed our optimistic timeline by four weeks, it felt wonderful to meander through this simple abode where every portion of it was built with unselfish hands and all the materials within were supplied from charitable hearts. I am extremely grateful for all of wonderful volunteers who were brave enough to venture down here and those who donated their hard earned money for this wonderful cause.

Jen and I have one more trip planned in the upcoming weeks. We want to see how Mireya and her family are enjoying their new house. The house should be painted and hopefully Jaime will use our paint selection. We will post more photos and a report. I apologize for the tardiness of this last update. Also, if you would like to view more photos please see Lou’s work http://www.flickr.com/photos/lou/sets/921292/

Primo and Rusty have applied a full smooth coat of earth plaster to the interior walls and a lime wash to the exterior walls. There are a few minor punch list items that need to be attended to; aside from that, the house will be ready for the Ramirez family to move into by the end of the month.

We have added more images of the construction of the house to our gallery. We will be adding still more images later this week. Stay tuned!

Construction will commence once again this weekend if all goes well. Some of us were scheduled to return last weekend but unfortunately sickness and transportation deficiencies detained them. I am excited about the amount of volunteer who have agreed upon a second tour of duty. I must say our last trip was incredible and I am still amazed at the amount to tireless work the volunteers put in and their ability to withstand the onslaught of barking orders and other not so nice words from the construction superintendents.

Although we left the house unfinished, about three days behind our over optimistic construction schedule, I was still thoroughly impressed by the amount we accomplished under all the circumstances. We left a home with roof on, windows and doors in, walls papered and wired, and floor prepared for pour. We plan on embarking on our journey today with plans on returning Sunday with a completed house. There are still plans for a final trip to seal the floor and take care of any remaining items. Thanks again to all the wonderful volunteers and donors who have supported us.

People in the colonias are mad resourceful. The gardens are amazing, rows of plastic buckets overflowing with plants. One woman had a system where her sink water was piped to water the garden. Tire retaining walls texture the hillsides. The houses are patchworks of whatever hard, flat surfaces people can find, a garage door, a whitewashed sign with faded red letters. Wood pallet fences reminicent of the American west. Houses are delicately linked across the hill by two thin wires, one black, one white. At night a soft glowing orb at each house blinks on, blues and yellows, a humbler reflection of the city lights below.

Thought the city is industrialized, at night it becomes less harsh than the American urban areas I’ve seen. Like the ramshackle community on the hill above, the lights are soft, blue, green, yellow. The lights don’t follow a grid, more a field of wildflowers than a matrix.

The progress so far has been described quite well by Lou (thanks). Perhaps I will share some more personal thoughts.

It seems the saying is true. Reality is never quite exactly as expected. No matter how much thought or mental preparation you have for a new or forthcoming experience, there is always room for surprises. In the case of this project that our dear friends introduced to us, it was a full of pleasant surprises lurking at every corner.

Tijuana is quite an interesting mix of cultural influences. The place where people from both side of the border mix and mingle or not mix and mingle. Despite the at times integrated and at times conflicting culture and building environment, what strikes me the most is the vividness and realness of daily life. Perhaps it is because we are not in the role of a typical tourist lingering in the English speaking side of town only. Or perhaps it is because of the objective of our trip that led us to pay a little more attention to the daily life of those ordinary people around us (just as we are ordinary people going about our business in our daily lives). Having had the opportunity to observe from a slightly closer distance and have relatively small interactions with the land and the people, I felt an evermore solid and real respect for those living a different but yet similar lifestyle than us. It seems we live a world apart at times, but yet we can still relate (even if it is to an extremely small degree). At the end of the day, head of the house hold still works hard to provide for their young ones and people make life work one way or another, which is really quite universal in all human cultures.

The building process was especially enriching part of the week. We had a group of great volunteers with one common goal in mind and quite frankly we were very focused on getting the building as far along as we possibly could while we were there. We all just want this family to have a great home. We all just want to help. Working hard side by side with everyone had been a great highlight of the process. I am very thankful to be part of such a great team (though we could have used a couple taller people!) More than that, the act of building was strangely fulfilling. Whether it was sifting sand or cutting wood or forming concrete, the hands on work was a great teacher. I feel a little more connected to the land, the surroundings and to everyone at the end of the day. Perhaps it is the physicality of it all or the knowledge that soon someone will make great use of this house. I must say the palettes worked a lot better than I had imagined in my mind and I must give two thumbs up to the three incredible organizers (Sam, Jen, and Fernando).

Special thanks to Milton, Lara, Alfredo, and Jaimie. The transportation, direction, manpower, and supplies were incredibly helpful to all the volunteers. Sam, Jenn, and Fernando, thank you for giving us an opportunity to be part of this project. For leading us in giving back and putting our skills and energy into better use. For breaking your backs (shoveling Sam?) and setting a great example.

There will surely be more progress reports coming. More work is currently being done by the volunteers (good luck everyone). Thus, please come back to check on this website. Please consider becoming a sponsor for this project if you have not already. There is no amount too small. If you have already done so, please continue spreading the word to those interested in becoming a sponsor. Don’t hesitate, act now.

Hi all. My name’s Lou, and I spent the past several days down in Tijuana helping the eco-politan team build the house. The entire experience was awesome. Some of us returned last night to get back to our normal lives (work…) but I think I speak for everyone when I say that we wish we could have remained down there the full week, as some of our party did. When we wrapped up construction on Monday afternoon, we had finished framing the exterior walls, infilling with palettes, and began framing the interior walls. We’d also started on the outhouse. I’ve got some photos, which I’ll post here soon.

There’s a lot I could say about what I learned just by being in a country and an environment so different than what we’re used to here in the States… there’s still a lot of northern influence because TJ is a border city– you can still listen to STAR and Ryan Seacrest on the radio–but there’s a lot of people who live in a level of poverty we’re not usually exposed to. The neighborhood we’re building in consists of a vast collection of handmade shacks alongside dirt roads on the side of a hill. There’s no plumbing and electricity comes by illegally tapping into the grid. The variety of families and styles of living vary greatly from one house to another, though. Up the hill from our site, there’s a woman who’s six months pregnant and she doesn’t even have a roof over her head. But our neighbor, a couple of houses down, seems to have put together a decent home despite a meager income. It’s very small, but they’ve got tile floors, a porch, a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, even a front and back yard. Still no running water, but they have television and cell phones. The family who lived there invited us over for dinner twice, and it gave us a sense of how people live in TJ. Not too much farther down the hill, where some of the roads become paved, there are buildings formed from concrete and guarded with iron gates.

I’m going to let some of the other people do some of the talking and sharing about their own experiences. But first, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the team:

Construction has finally begun! Last Thursday night, two family members and I, took off to San Diego, bought some supplies (Thanks White Cap for the discount!) and crossed the border. When we arrived at the site the retaining wall work was partially completed and there was still a mound of earth on the site. We were able to fix that with some quick tractor work and begun the layout with strings immediately. We found out that the grading was not even close to flat which resulted with the construction of a two foot stem wall on the east side. We also found out how quickly us spoiled gringos regretted bringing an ice chest and made repeated trips down the hill to the OXXO (the Mexican equivalent of 7-11) to buy cold water.

We were also very thankful to receive help from the Ramirez family. They helped with some of the escavting, form construction, and painting the 2×6 forms which we plan on using for our roof.

We tried hard to catch up to our Saturday pour schedule, working until dark each night, but alas we realized that it would have to be a Sunday pour. This was a problem because Sunday is a day of rest and to bring cement truck with pump would result in some major overtime pay. This crux had us really concerned with our tiny foundation budget which had already been surpassed from our addition form work and materials due to site conditions.

As Jaimie and I spoke of this major problem, one of the native laborers step up and said that they could mix the concrete and carry it up with five gallon buckets, all we need to do was rent a mixer. This was wonderful news because earlier that day a local resident came by and told me that he worked with concrete and had access to a mixer. The following day I was thoroughly impressed by the strength and stamina of this Mexican crew. They mixed 3.5 cubic yards of concrete and carried it all on their shoulders up the hill by the bucket full!! They completed this work within three hours. I am very thankful for their hard work.

We will now be returning to complete construction. We are still collecting materials and are grateful for any donations or discounts (thanks Michelle at Habitat for Humanity Restore in Sacramento) I am also very pleased with the amount of volunteers that will be sacrificing their own time and money to come down and work in the sweltering sun. Many of them being former studio comrades from the class of 04 at U.C. Berkeley. I would also thank all of our friends and family who have made contributions and still encourage other to continue to help.

Thanks to my Papa and Primo for thier back breaking work primo2.jpg

We will attempt to update the site during construction so come back soon and see it happen!