Visuals...Expedition Numero Uno

An Epic Panamanian Adventure

We just completed our first trip to Panama this summer. From August 9th-16th a group of nine of us flew to Panama City and then made our way to Granja San Jose Arriba, a farming cooperative in Gatu, Veraguas. Over the course of the trip we accomplished a lot and had a great time doing it. For a week we stayed with one of the families and got to experience real Panamanian life. They were super-hospitable keeping all of us for the week, feeding us, and providing ridiculous amounts of fresh fruit and coffee. Over the course of the stay we began an infrastructural development project for the community farm. In the past years their farm has been devastated by the strong winds of changing weather patterns. This has greatly affected their livelihood as sustenance farmers, and poses a yearly threat. Through the construction of a wind-solution to prevent crop destruction as well as a rancho (solar crop-drying area, crop storage, silo, meeting space, kitchen, bedroom and tool shed) with necessary facilities and increased capacity we will help the families achieve financial stability and create future opportunity. After thoroughly exploring the site, hours of conversation with the families and a few coffee-fueled late nights we were able to finalize a design. It incorporates a short-term and long-term wind-solution, which will prevent crop devastation and loss, and a new facility that will help to improve the farm’s profitability, creating a long-term investment in the future of their community. During the site visit we also engaged in a few construction activities. We competed in a block making workshop, helped to construct a latrine, and built a preliminary solar-drying facility. While there we also got to experience everything from Jungle hikes to swimming in waterfalls, and of course the occasional snake. After a great experience, we began the intense off-road journey to the main road and headed back to Panama City. After exploring Panama City everyone returned safely to the US. And now we begin the next part of the project - the construction phase.

Interested in joining, helping out, or networking… contact us at uscarchitecturebrigades@gmail.com

Fundraising Phase!

Currently we are choosing between different available projects in Panama; these range from designing the buildings for an agricultural tourism business to full scale redevelopment of a community that has been destroyed by flooding. Otherwise we are putting most of our energy into fundraising for our first research trip to Panama. The trip, which is scheduled for August 9th - 16th, will send 11 students to survey the project site and meet the community members we will be working with. During this time we will be conducting extensive research on the site's climate, landscape, and tectonics. It will also allow us to acquaint ourselves with local construction materials and methods. We will then work out preliminary design ideas and assess the community and ecological impact of our intervention.

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Our Vision

Global Architecture Brigades is a volunteer student-based collaborative dedicated to the research, design, and construction of socially responsible, environmentally sustainable solutions to architectural problems in the developing world. A think tank design approach utilizes extensive community dialog and independent research to create efficient, appropriate, and elegant structures to be embraced and utilized by those for whom they were built. Ultimately, extended relationships between brigades and communities would result not only in the implementation of a variety of projects, but also the accumulation of a vast wealth of knowledge from which future students, designers, and communities could learn.

Creating these solutions within the current parameters that the field of architecture has set is simply not possible. Students of design must question, reconsider, and ultimately rewrite every aspect of design that culture has come to accept. Through this counter-cultural approach to design defiance, architecture can become something essential not to the few who want, but rather to the many who need.