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Blueprint for Change
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Architecture students Dionisia Montanez and Erica Baptiste prepared and presented community development plans to city officials in Leon, Mexico this summer.
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Dozens of illegal settlements have sprouted on the outskirts of Leon, Mexico, with dirt roads, no running water, and little city support. In one of these neighborhoods, Lomas de Guadalupe, residents are building houses on eroding land, the dirt roads wash away during the rainy season, and a three-room health clinic struggles to serve 3,000 residents.
This summer, architecture students from the University of San Francisco spent three weeks studying and working in the neighborhood. Their goal was to devise a plan for a functional community, complete with permanent housing, businesses, a community center, and an expanded school and health clinic.
The USF group, led by Assistant Professor Seth Wachtel, was in Leon as part of a joint project with architecture students at the Jesuit Universidad Iberoamericana Leon. At the end of the three weeks, the students presented 10-year urban development plans to a panel of faculty, community members, and city officials. The students are continuing their work on the project with a Web-based exchange of plans with their Ibero Leon peers.
USF's four-year-old architecture major, which graduated its first class in May, is among the fastest growing on campus, and has carved out a niche as a program that puts architecture to work for social change.
"Architecture students will have a major influence on society and have an opportunity to make change in the world if they put their talents to work and if they can be inspired early on to make a better world through better urban design, regional planning, and appropriate affordable housing," Wachtel said.
The Architecture and Community Design Program began in 2003 with two adjunct professors and 20 students. Today there are three full-time professors, 12 adjuncts, and 85 students.
The hallmark of the program has come to be the hands-on community design outreach courses in which students are assigned real projects with real clients, such as the Leon project. Students are required to work on at least one local and one international community design outreach project. In many cases students also participate in the construction of their designs. Such projects have transformed spaces around the world, from San Francisco's Bayview Hunter's Point neighborhood to Zambia, where students built a library for orphaned children.
"Architects have the power and potential to change the world and change lives in what they design and build, whether it is a home that keeps a family alive or a library that brings the community together," said Julie Ehrlich '07, who participated in the Zambia project. She is now working at two small Bay Area architecture firms.
Closer to home, a project last year took students to Bayview Hunter's Point where they designed a streetscape to clean up a crime-ridden area. They also designed and built an entrance to Adventure Playground in Berkeley and a children's performance stage for Koshland Park in San Francisco. In Bayview, students have designed and will soon build Bridgeview Learning Garden, a place where neighbors and children will learn to grow fruit and vegetables.
"At USF, students are more open to non-traditional ways of working in the world and are desiring something more than just a fast-track to money," Wachtel said. 
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