Last night our dedicated volunteers convened for a design review of four schools on our project board. Attentive–and somewhat fatigued–participants and guests assembled in the Gro Kay Disko living room to share ideas. Megan Roy, Haiti team member four weeks standing, reflects on the review:

The bunk room at the Architecture for Humanity house in the hills of Petionville is currently overflowing with summer volunteers, mostly graduate architecture students who will be returning to school in a few short weeks. As another volunteer and I compared our drastically different design solutions for the rural Good Samaritan school yesterday over lunch, Eric decided that a late night design review was much overdue!

Especially as we had special guests in the house. Tommy, a practicing architect from Texas and close friend of the Maison, had just flown in that day. He had a lot of input that was greatly appreciated by those of us still struggling with structural details. Kate, the Haiti team head honcho, also just arrived, and was able to suggest useful precedents from the Open Architecture Network.

As we crowded around the living room table, laptops, Nalgene bottles and trace paper competed for space. We shared our progress one by one, and discussed how to continue pushing forward despite the not-yet-approved Ministry Standards for school design. My biggest challenge has been fitting enough classroom space for 220 students on a very small and slopping site, while still maintaining one story and north/south orientation. The session could have easily continued into the night, but there were Skype dates waiting, pets to be fed, and laundry to be washed. So we convened at a reasonable time, saving some work for the next day!

Thanks Megan–hope it's going well!