"Just a little simple box"

Had a pretty good weekend. After waking up friday morning at 5:45 AM for work, I decided to repeat the process the next day to meet for Habitat for Humanity. I met the group in the parking lot over by Gammage at 6:30 AM. The build coordinator, a radically conservative republican in design management, another guy in planning who knew all my friends in architecture but we'd just never met before since I don't go out much, and three young guys who SCREAMED freshman. What is it about freshman that make them seem so young? Their manic eagerness? Their desperate humor? Maybe its because they have something to prove. Anyway.

When I last left Valley of the Sun Habitat for Humanity, they had just opened their new store of donated fixtures and building materials. Since my return, they aquired the warehouse behind the warehouse the store is in and turned it into a materials storehouse and workshop. This was our destination this sunday. It turns out that the last few sundays they've been taking willing volunteers to the warehouses to prefabricate wall sections. These wall sections, once built, can be dragged out to the site and pushed into place by site volunteers, especially useful in so called "blitz builds" where volunteers rapidly construct a series of houses.

It was ok by me, despite the gorgeous day we were working in climate controlled comfort, and putting stuff togather by hammer and nail. I really do hammering together walls, theres something oddly satisfying about the whole thing, the solidity and reality of the nail, the hammer, and the wood. Where before there was blank wood, I have imposed order, enforced it upon the bare wood to make a skeleton of a home which will last a dozen years at least. The only thing was that my hands became really sore and tired after hammering nearly nonstop for 8 hours.

We took an hour for lunch and drove down a place nearby on 7th st. and Donovan (?) Durrango (?) whatever the street north of the I-10 is. It's a tiny Mexican counter restaurant called Carolina's and by the accolates on the wall, apparently they have the best tortillas in Arizona. Despite its small size, it was packed with people of all colors and socioeconomic levels. Small, dingy, hole in the wall kind of place. I knew it would be good. I got some tacos and they were decent, not the best Mexican I've ever had, but solid fare nonetheless.

After we finished building around 2, I biked home to grab my bag, and biked down to safeway, a trek of slightly less than three miles. Picked up as many groceries I could take in, and tied to, my backpack, and biked home. Also stopped by a little market I found near my apartment, something between a Food City and a Circle K. Sells tons of junk food and sodas, but also has a fruit and vegetable aisle. Made a welcome home spaghetti dinner for Saori with mixed salad and those easy Italian Parmesan turnover things one makes with store biscuits.

Monday in studio, we tore apart a road atlas of Phoenix metro area and pinned up all the squares on the wall to make a street map about ten feet wide. The focus of the studio is on the city itself, so it was an good start. It was interesting, because we stopped and talked about places on the map for about half an hour, just oddities and interesting points, etc. Once you get that kind of resolution, you can see exactly how places are related.

Our teacher was telling us about one big house in Chandler near the intersection of Warner and Kyrene. I was intriged so I looked it up. Its a huge Tudor mansion, 12,000 sq ft on a rolling green grass estate right off of Kyrene. Handcarved finishings, a little slice of northern Europe in southern Phoenix. Anyway, I found an interesting point, so I dug in and discovered, like all interesting houses, that this one also had an interesting owner. The original builder was a construction magnate, Phil Eckard (or something like that) who had it constructed in 1984. He sold it about ten years later to another guy, Cable Rosenberg, who was another self made businessman with a string of used-car dealerships. However, the house is currently for sale for the low price of twelve million dollars (no joke).

I wonder if every city has its strange history mansions. We can't forget either, the palatial mansion in PV belonging to Pierre Falcone, billionaire, politico, philanthropist, international arms dealer.

I'll tell you about today later. I've written enough and its time for bed. I have work tomorrow.