Necils and I were the only ones who were able to attend this meeting; Tom had work and Hana was in Morocco, working diligently and being frustrated with rhino (the software we use), while making great progress on a section perspective of the amphitheater.

 

We arrived at the meeting which turned out to be a workday. The number of people who showed up was large. Mari helped tape the drawing down to a board on the ground, and members of the community looked at it and asked questions as they passed by. The community loved Tom’s design of the library and the idea of rammed earth and thermal mass, specifically how rammed earth absorbs energy during the day, and gives it off during the night. It also cools during the night, and remains cool throughout the day. Arturo was excited because he thought it was the perfect temperature to store seeds for the garden as well.

 

 

Here is some of the work we presented:

The images in full resolution can be found here

 

 

The day was filled with parkour; kids were jumping from compost pile to compost pile, seeing how quickly they could navigate all of the obstacles. Maria cooked black beans and made pico-de-gallo, which tasted great on corn tortillas. As the sun set, we asked Arturo and Maria to talk about the designs with the community, and we left the drawing taped to the board. We hoped that this would allow everyone to familiarize themselves with the design and for us to receive more critique next week and finalize the design, as we will be nearing the stage of starting on the construction documents and structural calculations. After the sun set, we took off for an hour long bike ride to get back home.