Habitat for Humanity

Being able to work on a Habitat for Humanity project site was a great way for me to see how a house is built literally from the ground up. I had heard of Habitat for Humanity previously but was unfamiliar with how it actually operated and some of the tasks done by volunteers. The day that I volunteered was still fairly early in the project, I participated in nailing together load bearing walls, installing different forms of insulation materials, and transported part of the foundation. It was fairly strenuous work!

Hammering nails into exterior walls

One of the things I learned this day was how much work and man (or woman) power really went into building a house. Most of the tasks were fairly simple but were sometimes dangerous or required multiple hands. I was not aware until experiencing this that the future owner of the house puts in many hours working on their own home. It was great to be able to meet the woman who would be living in the house in just a few months. At the end of the day the benefits of this were two fold. On one hand, in a design perspective, it was good knowledge to discover where studs, nails, windows, etc., go in building a house from scratch, as well as what kinds of materials are used. In a more humanitarian viewpoint volunteering for this was such a fantastic opportunity to see how designers, architects, and various creators of the built environment can make an impact.

Myself and fellow designers after putting up an exterior wall