While preparing students to build bridges and communities, the Southwestern College Architecture Club is first building a foundation.

Southwestern College Architecture President Mariana Diaz. Photo by Ernesto Rivera

SWC students recently competed in “Design Village,” an annual architecture competition held at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Structures were designed by architecture students Mariana Diaz, 20, and Hector Villa, 20, architecture majors.

Diaz and Villa had involvement and input from the entire club, which was able to send 12 students and came home with an honorable mention.

Advisor Diana De La Torre, first year adjunct professor of architecture, said the club’s mission is to prepare students to transfer and for the profession.

“You learn things you won’t find in a classroom,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for students to have a better grasp of the profession. You have to be able to work well with people and it fosters that kind of community that you need.”

De La Torre said Design Village gives students an opportunity to design and come to life on a small scale.

“It’s an opportunity to build and go through the construction process,” said De La Torre.  “The ideas aren’t just in your head anymore, you actually see it. You can touch it, you can step in it and you can sleep in it.”

Diaz said the club spent the whole semester preparing for Design Village as well as raising funds to attend.

“The architecture club was really involved, it really is a little community,” she said. “It wasn’t just the 12 students who attended that helped out. You learn by doing and hands-on experience.”

Diaz said that the competition was difficult and students had to walk a several miles to the construction area carrying their own materials and tools.

“We worked a lot through spring break building it here and that was a good decision because other schools were there still figuring things out,” she said.

Diaz said that many private architecture schools came and admired the club’s structures.

“It all came together really well,” she said. “We were really popular out there and it was really nice to have that feedback.”

De La Torre said the theme of Design Village was metamorphosis.

“Design Village wanted to explore transformable, adaptable architecture and they were challenging students to come up with something that responded to that,” she said

“They had to be able to carry all their materials for about a mile into the construction site and then start building. They had all day Friday to build and they got judged on Saturday.”

Each team had several qualifications to meet, said De La Torre.

“They had to provide shelter, all six students had to sleep in it for two nights,” she said. “If they didn’t sleep in it they were going to get disqualified.  At least 50 percent of the materials used had to be recycled and reused in some way.”

Villa said there were 50 schools that competed in Design Village.

“We built them here, disassembled them, put the materials in a trailer, drove it all the way over there and reassembled it,” he said.

De La Torre said that the club received enormous amounts of help to be able to attend Design Village, including students paying for their own registration fees, relatives helping with transportation and donations from the Environmental Technology Club and the Chicano/Latino Coalition.

“It took a lot of work from the students,” she said. “We had so much help and that’s why we were able to pull it off.”