We’ve been designing. What a relief. April was great at taking charge today in the library of Los Piletones. First we all brainstormed together of the many ways in which we could intervene. After that, we decided what were the 8 most important things to get done and decided to just tackle those for now. Obviously, we’d love to be able to do everything for the daycare, but we just don’t have the time or the resources. After deciding upon those, we were able to split them into two basic categories: furniture/built things; and environment. I was really excited about the environment stuff because I want to be able to heat the daycare. It was the number 1 most important thing that the teachers asked for. Alex was really the only other person who was gung-ho about working on environmental stuff because he wanted to work on lighting. We gathered some more people onto our team who also wanted to think about color and other big-picture items. Then we split into our groups and started designing. I was honestly surprised that I was the only one really pushing to think about heating and ventilation. Maybe I should have been surprised since it’s not one of the more glamorous things to work on like painting or building furniture, but the teachers emphasized the need so much and we were always freezing in there too! I mean, come on! I really believe that architecture is more than just aesthetics, which is partly why I felt so empty as a graphic designer. Architecture is also about creating functional spaces, not just beautiful ones. Heat should be more important than color. So I ended up taking the lead on heating and ventilation because I cared the most. Unfortunately, we might not even be able to do much more than install new (and more) ceiling fans because destroying sections of the wall just might not be feasible.