WHO WE ARE

 

lo-cus \ 'lo-kes \ n, pl lo-ci \ 'lo-si \ 1: the place where something is situated or occurs : site, location 2: a center of activity, attention, or concentration 3: a point of convergence < in democracy the locus of power is in the people.

 

Project Locus, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, was founded in the fall of 2000 by three graduates of the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. Out of common goals, and mutual architectural interests, we developed the organization with the intention of trying to fill a void in professional practice at the level of service, in addressing critical problems in underserved communities.

The initial conceptual framework of the project was modeled after Samuel Mockbee’s Auburn University Rural Studio, where architecture students design and construct homes and community buildings for residents of Hale County, Alabama, one of the poorest counties per capita in the United States. Since 1993, Mockbee’s students have designed and built more than 20 structures, won numerous awards and have inspired a generation of young architects to pursue a career in public service. In 2000, Mockbee was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, in recognition of his work with the Rural Studio. His death in 2001 from leukemia strengthened our resolve to carry on his work, and to expand it to any area where lack of or devastation to the community infrastructure is endemic, including rural and urban areas, domestic and abroad.

One of the central motivations behind founding Project Locus was that it serve as an alternative to the traditional college level architectural education, allowing students to transcend ‘paper architecture’ and to gain essential, practical, real-world experience while designing and building physical structures for truly underserved clients. And while it is important for us that the organization function as an educational program, utilizing architecture students who are at a more independent stage in their career, it is fundamentally different than other university-community partnerships like Rural Studio in that it is not an ancillary program of a college or university, and is rather intended to work as an exchange program admitting students from several institutions at a time to work on a single project. Our intention for creating an autonomous organization was for the purpose of maintaining a level of flexibility and control within the program, not only permitting us to pursue a diverse set of project types in a range of geographical locations, but also allowing us the freedom to adjust the curriculum mid-project, and the option of using professional craftsmen, contractors and volunteers in place of students. The primary purpose of Project Locus is not as a school, but to help build and rebuild in underserved communities, and however possible.

Our intentions are by no means to engage in a series of singular acts, but to devise a new, proactive process for reassessing the identity of a community, proposing and developing prototypical ideas for guiding and catalyzing its transformations. Attacking each case from a planning perspective, using extensive research and demographic data, our projects will confirm how architecture students and university programs are a practical and conceptual resource for the community, and how their energies and expertise can be employed to address current and future social, economic and environmental issues. The goal is not to solve every problem we meet, but rather, through constructing physical attempts, to inspire others to join the effort.

 

OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS

 

Patrick Rhodes, Founder and Co-Director

Master of Architecture, Southern California Institute of Architecture, 1999
Bachelor of Design, University of Florida, 1996

 

Caitlin Heckathorn, Co-Director

Bachelor of Science in Urban Studies and Planning, University of New Orleans, 2008
Architecture, Kansas State University 2002 - 2007

 

Jorge Marien , Director

Master of Architecture, Southern California Institute of Architecture, 1999
Bachelor of Design, University of Florida, 1996

 

Michael Rank , Director

Master of Architecture, Southern California Institute of Architecture, 1999
Bachelor of Design, University of Florida, 1996

 

Jerryn McCray , Program Director

Bachelor of Architecture, Auburn University, 2002

 

Deepak Tolani, Chief Financial Officer

MBA, Michigan State University, 1999
Bachelor of Science, Computer Engineering, University of Florida, 1996

 

Jackson Blalock , Secretary

Bachelor of Architecture, Clemson University 2006