design, build, learn. repeat.

Biloxi North 40

I took my new Trek out on its maiden voyage this morning, doing a route called the Biloxi North 40 with my friend Anne. The land here changes pretty quickly as you head north of the coast. Biking just a couple miles inland, the cities of Biloxi and D’Iberville morph into a rural landscape interspersed with concrete distributors and uninspiring subdivisions. The coast’s southern live oaks are replaced by scrubby forests of longleaf and slash pines. We headed out around 11, so we had a hot and sunny two-hour ride. The bike was a good choice; it’s a hybrid road …

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More houses!

Construction is happening fast! I really want to be outdoors helping build, and when I finish up my current set of plans I’ll probably see about working construction for a couple of days. Anyway, here’re a few more updates. Below, I found Mr. Lai working on his house along with Habitat (Peter and Deubs have been out there this whole week and their crew is doing some great work). Another house that is going up is this one on Division street for Mr. Tran and his family. This is a really interesting house and is right across from our office. …

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Framing on Hung’s House

It took a while to get going, but now that it is started Hung’s house is going up at a great speed! Habitat for Humanity and their NCCC volunteers are doing some good work over there. This will be an exciting house to see go up. This week, they’ve put down the floor decking and begun framing and sheathing the walls:

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Architecture Blogs

This is primarily a shout out to Snarchitecture, a cool architecture student blog on which Eddie, friend and fellow architecture grad from UVA, was nice enough to link to me. It’s good to see all the different things people are up to. More young grads should have blogs like that to help share the different experiences and opportunities in architecture. A couple other good ones I know of: Up Your Architecture [James, GCCDS staff and University of Minnesota grad] Lost Between the Letters [Della, University of Minnesota M. Arch thesis student] Zenorschnitzel [Jessie, GCCDS staff and Auburn grad] If you …

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Greenhouse Design/Build

Sergio and his students at UT Austin are not afraid of the epic roadtrip, and last Friday six of them packed themselves and a partially built greenhouse into a pickup truck and drove the 9 hours to Biloxi for a weekend of work. The result is the greenhouse above, which replaces Patty’s old plastic storage shed and gives her a place to keep her plants during the winter. Click below for more photos!

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2 1/2 Weeks at Rosetti (Part 2)

As promised, some photos of the finished products of the past 2-3 weeks of work. As the Mississippi State students are working at the house on Fridays, we’re continuing to make progress with trim, and we’re working on choosing materials for the floors, cabinets, stairs, etc. The finished railing! The finished mosaic! Emily working on trimming out the ceiling. Patty chose a rusty orange color for the beams. Very striking now but it will look great with the cabinets (which may also become orange) and the slate floors.

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2 1/2 Weeks at Rosetti

The past two and a half weeks have seen Patty’s treehouse come much closer to looking like a finished house. This post is an attempt to document the process; I will get some more finished photos soon. The key to our progress was the serendipitous arrival of Fran Halperin and Eric Christ, partner architects from San Anselmo, California, who have been traveling the country in Hank, their VW van, over the past four or five months. Fran and Eric originally planned to stay for a week or so, but — upon seeing, I think, the extent to which we could …

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General Life Updates

Hands On’s 80s Roller Skating Party last night was a blast. Wish I had some pictures… hopefully others will make some available. Felt a little sore today, but still played Tuesday night Ultimate until we got downpoured on. The rear window of my car was smashed while it was sitting in the parking lot at work. No clue what happened. Was it done with a brick? Was it done with a stick? Did they run very far? Why was it done to my car? I got it repaired today, putting me awfully close to having spent more money fixing the …

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Joining Up

It’s back to work, but not yet back into the swing of things. I shifted as of yesterday to being paid by AmeriCorps, which doesn’t change much except that I have a new weekly meeting to go to, extra paperwork, and four days of “orientation” at Hands On this week. Orientation is tedious, and I’d rather be doing work, but so it goes. I’m looking forward to this weekend, however, and to hopefully getting a new client next week. Outside of architecture work, I want to resume learning Spanish. For now I am working on reading Los Diarios de motocicleta …

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