The Unexpected Architect

At the Chicago Architectural Biennial

...saw some amazing recyclable homes here:
steel frame simple homes, that trinidad could have entered to make as a steel industry morph, emergence, diversification, economic exploration as the traditional forms are flooded, price down and under demand...filled in with bamboo, but it was like brown needles, something i have never seen before, but in any case, it was nothing but thatch. all light, all manageable by two persons.
another insertion toward affordable homes for the lowest end of the housing market.




i have developed a healthy interest in architecture in recent years, the interest to build and design for various conditions and factors, more of a reaction to the ignorant stupidity i see around me: like living in a global warming caribbean and the laying of concrete, the cutting down of trees, the building of concrete houses, with nary ventilation, that are just ugly ass hot houses. the insertion of doors and windows that seems to be a tax on a use of space. windows one can hardly breathe from let alone alight out of in an emergency, no interest in light, and oh by god, zero thought for coordinate orientation...when we are a windward island. all the breeze coming from the east.

and then to see how people do not maintain and manage and upkeep the homes they are afforded, inherited from parents. I realize I have a thing , a strong thing for hearth and home.

It is so odd sometimes how we develop interest and involvement
truth be told though, i been designing homes since i was a teenager.
My first was the house my father said he would build for my grandmother, his mother. and I made a drawing of that. I am sure I still have that sketch, for it was always in my bible from childhood, a red one. Then i drew a house, a spanish type almost repurposed stable home for my next door lot. I always fancy to take over this whole block where my maternal grandparents settle. we are only three homes on this side, two houses or one compound on the opposite. and my neighbors have been here since my grandparents time...i fancy owning this whole side. so I sketched a house for the right south side. a lovely impressive home, if not just because of its features. then i designed a three level, space reserved dwelling for my back yard that would have been rental property for some avant garde professional, preferably female. where the first level was an enclosed gallery, second level kitchen and dining and patio. third level the bathroom and bed suite. and it was all on a height where there is already a bathroom in the yard and where we hang clothes, store room, i was going to maintain that purposed area. and the the roof, was going to be an open place. for laundry, liming, it was going to be perfect. cause i was not going to chop down any of the trees that encroached the space, they were going to be part of the structure: the two mango trees to the south, the mango tree to the west, and the fig trees and newbie noni growing on the north side in the neighbor's yard..and to the east, wide open unencumbered. wow.

where i first got this inkling to architecture, drawing design and layout, is beyond me, although, my mom taking her interior designing class in brooklyn all those years when i was a little girl just flashed in my mind. she had a white architectural table and all. kind of makes me thing so much was missed