_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 graduate architecture students 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, the poorest county 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 not only to urban areas, but 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 needy 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 rebuild underserved communities, and however possible. Although we are a small, grassroots organization, intending over the next few years to begin operations with relatively small projects located in troubled communities in US inner-cities and rural areas, part of our passion for the organization grows out of a desire to learn techniques of design and construction of indigenous peoples around the world. And so we hope to expand our projects to serving impoverished populations in underdeveloped countries, especially Central and South America, the African continent, and disadvantaged areas of developing countries where exceptional principles of architecture will provide excellent learning opportunities, in many instances learning from a culture as much as we help. In vast areas of southern Africa, whole communities have lost a middle generation to the AIDS virus, leaving no one to practice or pass on the common legacy of craft and knowledge, in which case Project Locus will provide a platform of cultural exchange to help preserve and maintain a way of life. This concentration on the community structure directed our focus to designing public buildings. The family is the core of the community, and our idea is to reach as many families with the most efficient use of resources, creating a central gathering point, or locus where, in concert with other organizations, we can develop programs of literacy and job training, encourage education, physical fitness, and help to seed new businesses. Most importantly, we will give people in unexpected places access to provocative art, architecture, and critical ideas in the hopes of opening their minds and enlightening their spirits, helping them to find a collective voice and begin to reshape their future.

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 economic, social and political 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 executive director

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

John Cotton Architects, with a concentration in low-income and affordable
housing, 1998 – 2002
NBBJ Sports and Entertainment Architecture, 1999
Associate, Geoffrey Scott and Associates, 1998
Historic American Building Survey, The Department of the Interior, 1997

 

Michael Rank, vice president, director

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

Leonard Grant Architect, 2001 – present
Associate, Geoffrey Scott and Associates, 1997 – 2001
Frank Gehry Associates, 1996 – 1997

 

Jorge Marien, vice president, director

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

private practice, 2000 – present
Callas Shortridge Architects, 1997 – 2000

 

Deepak Tolani, chief financial officer, director

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

Consultant, Senior Business and Financial Analyst

 

 

Yuruani LaFontaine, director

Bachelor of Science, Psychology, University of Southern California, 1997

 

 

 

Melissa Faith Coleman, secretary

Harvard Medical School, Class of 2008
Post Baccalaureate Pre-medical Program, Johns Hopkins University 2002
Bachelor of Liberal Arts, Philosophy, St. John’s College, 2000

Specialty Laboratories, Lab Tech, 2001 – 2002
Fogarty – Mali Training Program, University of Maryland Medical School/NIH, Mali, West Africa, 1999
Asociacion – Benefica PRISMA, Research Associate, Lima, Peru, 1997 – 1998
National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Biomedical Research Fellow, 1997