design, build, learn. repeat.

Friday Afternoon Refuses To End

As a way to pass the terribly dull hours of Friday afternoon, let’s wrap up what’s been going on this week: Compiled a spreadsheet of all the property on Oak Street (above) to help us determine what properties might need zoning changes or help rebuilding. Perversely, this was a lot of fun. Piles were driven for Hung’s house on Crawford Street (see previous post). Apparently, they ran into just about every obstacle under the sun, including a huge taproot about 6 feet down, but succeeded in the end. My floor plans for the Nguyen family (a four-bedroom house just across …

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New house starting

I have a new house starting on Crawford Street for Hung and his family. It’s a new three-bedroom L-shaped configuration with the bedrooms along the longer axis of the house and a covered front stair leading to the living and dining rooms and kitchen in the back. It also has a significant amount of deck space, with front and back decks and a small porch for the master bedroom. Habitat for Humanity of Northern Virginia will be taking the lead on construction for this one. The piles just went in yesterday: Follow the link for more photos of the pile-driving …

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Just Keep Biking On

Since my car met its end a couple of weeks ago I’ve been riding my bike. It’s not a great bike — an old, heavy street bike with two functioning gears that I found ownerless behind Hands On — but I’m enjoying it inordinately. At the distances I typically go, there’s no need to drive; the bike is hardly much slower, uses no gas (in Mississippi, where the majority of vehicles on the road are pickups or SUVs, bringing down the average a little doesn’t hurt), and costs barely anything. Plus, there’s something that biking does to reconnect you to …

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Au Revoir, FEMA Trailer

Patty’s FEMA Trailer is gone, finally freeing up the corner of her lot. I’ve never seen the property without it and it makes a big difference. Check it out. More images:

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Tax Day

It’s been quite a few days. The weekend was great — beautiful weather; haircut, bike shopping, Mockingbird Cafe and Rock Band in Bay St. Louis on Saturday; brunch at Jessie’s, football on the beach, and bad movie fest with Will and Jesse on Sunday. (Ninja Condors 13, Yor, the Hunter from the Future, and Fantasy Mission Force, if you’re curious). Now it’s cold – down to 48 tonight – and work is getting pretty intense as we prepare for the second Oak Street community meeting tonight. It should be a pretty good session as we get down and dirty with …

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La primera tertulia fue un éxito!

Por varios meses, he intentado de empezar un grupo de conversación en español, y estoy muy satisfecho que hoy hemos hecho el primer “Tertulia” de Biloxi. KC, Yvonne, Dylan, y Will han venido y fue muy interesante de hablar con varias personas con varios niveles de español (incluyendo mi español podrido…). Creo que vamos a hacerlo cada viernes aldredor de las seis de la tarde; esta vez lo hicimos a Kokopelli’s y era muy bien. ¡Que exciting!

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Boston & Structures for Inclusion Part 2

This is mostly a picture post – click below for more! I also wanted to quickly elaborate on some of the themes that came out of the conference: Top-down vs. bottom-up: There was a lot of discussion about top-down (centralized) versus bottom-up (grassroots) approaches to planning and architecture. One strong point of view held that bottom-up work best engages the community and produces the most useful results. However, I think a large number of people also realized that architects and planners are uniquely able to mediate between top-down and bottom-up approaches. This theme came out in Teddy Cruz’s talk as …

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Boston & Structures for Inclusion

Structures for Inclusion was AMAZING. The conference was eye-opening for a lot of people. It was certainly the first conference of its kind to take place at Harvard, and the students at the GSD put a lot of effort into setting it up and making it run smoothly. We had a great representation from Biloxi: nine from the GCCDS, three from Architecture for Humanity, five Mississippi State students, one Minnesota student, and one Hands On volunteer. I finally met the other Design Corps Fellows: Betsy Ramaccia, Megan Clark, Eric Goldman, Jared Hueter, and Ella Scheuer. We more or less got …

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Welcome home…

Back from Boston! No sooner do I pull out of the airport than my car gets rear-ended by an inattentive Chevy Tahoe. The accident crumples the trunk, smashes some taillights, and causes enough damage to the frame that the car is totaled. Nooo! My poor little car… I wish I could save it, but I can’t afford to. The other person’s insurance will pay me the market value of the car, but I’d have to shell out an extra $2000 to get it repaired. Man… Anyway, Boston and the Structures for Inclusion conference were great, and I’ll have words and …

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