USF students help design buildings
Architecture students at the University of San Francisco are applying the language of architecture and design to spiritually sensitive projects in several economically struggling places around the world.
In India, they are helping to realize a community center in an urban settlement known as a bubble of Muslim-Hindu harmony.
In South Dakota, they are contributing ideas for an Oglala Lakota Native American cultural arts center dedicated to the spirit of the visionary Black Elk, who participated in the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, was hurt at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 and later converted to Catholicism. The location is the Pine Ridge Reservation, richly spiritual but one of the most economically desperate spots in the nation. Unemployment tops 80 percent and life expectancy is the nation's worst.
"When the children come of age they begin to lose their dream," Black Elk's great-granddaughter Georgine Looks Twice, who leads the project, said in an e-mail to Catholic San Francisco.
The students are helping a second Oglala Lakota group design a meeting hall for 200 people. Their idea: a circular structure that combines a traditional roundhouse with modern framing that keeps the floor of the structure open.
The students are working under Assistant Professor Seth Wachtel, who directs the Architecture and Community Design Program in the Department of Art and Architecture and is co-director of the Garden Project Living-Learning Community at Jesuit-run USF.
Wachtel focuses on low-income housing and the development of innovative construction techniques that produce sustainable and aesthetically and culturally appropriate buildings for human environments. He runs the Community Design Outreach and International Projects courses, which provide students the opportunity to work on real world design/build projects for underserved communities both locally and internationally.
In addition to the projects in India and on the Lakota reservation, the students have local projects in underserved communities in Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Liberia and China. In the Brazil project, for example, they are working with an American Jesuit priest, Father Harold Rahm, who has an outreach with the community and sees the need for a place where unwed mothers and their children can go for help.
The India project is in Gujurat state, in the Jamalpur area of Ahmedabad. Within Jamalpur is the settlement of Ram Rahim no Teckro, with its Muslim-Hindu population mix that has remained harmonious through generations of inter-religious strife in the region.
The students are challenged with the problem of working in a cramped urban spot to design a tiny gathering space that adjoins a Hindu temple and a Muslim gravesite. The design must reflect the special character of the place without using overt religious references.
Student Alex Kieve said the students decided to design the structure so that it is open to cooling breezes from a nearby river. They hit on an idea based on a popular form of recreation in the settlement: flying kites. "Our idea was based on a kite," Kieve said. "By raising it up it acts to catch some of the wind that comes from the river."
The students struggled with the Lakota roundhouse project. They first sketched an angular, Western-style building, but that idea was turned back by the clients. Returning to the classroom, they joined forces and arrived at a design more in keeping with Lakota tradition.
Student Daniel Begaye, who is a Navajo, decided to join the project. He consulted with a Lakota friend and came back to the group with a new perspective.
"I told them it should be a circular building," he said. The circle is sacred to many Native American tribes because it is considered one of the most powerful shapes in nature, Begaye said.
"A lot of the religious beliefs are based on how the universe was created," he said. "I basically told them that, and we went from there."
The clients liked the students' second version, which included not only a circular design but also a modern roof structure rather than one supported by lodge poles.
"One thing they liked about it was taking their traditions and ideas and moving in another direction," student Jake Gulick said. "It's about the future for these people. They're trying to reboost their culture and also the area."
The project by a separate Oglala group for a cultural arts center will help bring art into the lives of people who have long had to put all their resources into survival, said Looks Twice, whose non-profit Morningstar Journey Inc. is the developer. She said the larger goal is to help the community on its journey toward spiritual healing.
"We have more than one family living in a household and some or many may be suffering from one or more addictions," she said in an e-mail. "Even if the one program this individual goes to for help does help, this person still has to go home. This is one of the reasons our people are having a hard time coming to grips with colonization. It is a never-ending cycle and when the children come of age they begin to lose their dreams and apathy sets in and it starts again. Our Sacred Rituals and Traditions are also losing their significance because of this."
The Jesuits have a long history with the Oglala people. In 1888, the order founded Red Cloud Indian School as Holy Rosary Mission, at the request of Chief Red Cloud. Father Tom O'Neil, a Jesuit who worked at the school until recently, introduced Looks Twice to Wachtel.
As a result, the USF students are playing their part in renewing the relationship.
"I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with Professor Wachtel and his design class and my hope is the feeling is mutual," Looks Twice said.
By Rick DelVecchio
From July 24, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
