I’m back!  I needed a month off to recover from finishing up work, the holidays and other related activities.  But I’m back and will be likely sharing with you in a different way.  Where before I tended to be global in nature, I made a resolution to keep it micro this year.  The economic and political landscapes will just have to get by without me for a while.

Now let’s talk about this new course in which I’ve enrolled:  Designing Resilient Schools.  MOOC is the acronym for massive online open course, and that is just what this is.  Nearly 600 individuals have signed on to work as teams and design a prototype school to be built on a site in the devastated municipality of Guiuan in the Phillipines.  The Guiuan high school was destroyed in the aftermath of the Typhoon.  That is likely the first school that will be built from the selected prototype.

The class lasts for six weeks, and as I mentioned, we will form into teams and work together to come up with these designs.  So far we are a team of three:  Richu Thomas and Rinki Shah, two young architects from Indian have joined with me to be a team.  We’ll recruit a few more along the way, but it’s a start.  Our first assignment is to write about the native architecture of the Phillipines.  It’s due on the 24th, and is required to be in A3 .pdf format, whatever that is.  I see I have some peripheral work to do in order to meet the class standard for submittals.  In any event, I am confident our team will shine, as we are a motivated group and want to see this thru to fruition – maybe even to construction!  I’ll be writing more about this in the days to come.  In the meantime, here’s some pictures of the devastation that the area has suffered.

Later!