From The Ground Up - Dimensions of Affordable Housing

One of our recent projects, which I personally co-led and co-designed, focused on the critical issue of affordable housing and its consequences. To provide students with a tangible understanding of this topic, my partner teacher and I organized an engaging field trip to Casa Familiar, an organization actively involved in providing affordable housing in the San Ysidro border community among other supports. After the trip, we had the honor of hosting a guest speaker who had firsthand experience of being unhoused and had also achieved recognition as a published author. He shared his personal journey of living on the streets and his journey in securing affordable housing and the obstacles that he faced. I facilitated a Socratic seminar to discuss his talk and one of his essays after.

To further enrich the project, I reached out to a friend who is a graduate of the NewSchool of Architecture and Design. With her assistance, we arranged a college visit to the school, allowing students to explore the ways in which architecture can contribute to solving affordable housing challenges. Additionally, my friend, being an architect herself, generously offered one-on-one professional guidance to students as they worked on their floor plans and 3D models of affordable housing structures. The entire six-week project has been an incredible learning experience, as I delved into the intricacies of project design and collaborated closely with my math colleagues. Throughout the process, I have received invaluable support and feedback from my team of mentors, enabling me to identify areas for improvement and enhance the overall learning outcomes.