UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!

My first project is finally in construction! In the fall I worked with another municipal development volunteer, Mike, on the design of a market and cancha in his site of Camasca, Intibuca. (A cancha is a concrete court that is used for basketball and soccer.) Camasca is about 6 hours away from my site, via El Salvador, so though I haven’t been able to see the structure going up, Mike sent me these photos so I could watch the process and share them with you. While Mike was working on the administration side of the project organizing the community and soliciting funds from the municipality, I was in charge of the design. We had a unique situation to work with - a sloping site that connected the center of town on the lower end to the church and central plaza uphill. A retaining wall held back the earth that carved a space out for our project, and on either side a set of stairs led up from the town center to the church plaza. Because of the slope of the site, we decided to use a truss roof structure to open up one side of the space and create visual continuity to the church and plaza above. Along the retaining wall we built in concrete steps that function as seating for kids and families watching the ongoing game. On Sundays the space serves as a market for farmers that come in from the mountains as far as El Salvador to sell their produce. On three sides of the structure we designed a thickened wall so that the farmers have a place to sit while selling their products. In additional to the recreational and market activities taking place here, we built a platform at one end to be used for town hall meetings and other town gatherings. The structure itself is fairly simple construction, but with the challenging site and mixture of uses, I think we came up with a creative space. I’m looking forward to seeing the final product and will post more photos when it is completed. I’ve attached some photos of the construction as well as some illustrative drawings I created during the design process.