12 Jul Meetings, an Interview, and my Workshop

So far this week with only three days in, there has been two meetings, an interview,  and I also held a workshop designed for the volunteers on the Barrio Viejo National Historic Landmark (NHL) project. My early Monday morning meeting was with Carol Beidleman from Environment for the Americas in from New Mexico, where we were able to discuss the progress of the internship. After introducing Carol to our fieldwork division morning shift of volunteers, I then was able to take her, as well as my internship supervisors and counterpart Magda, on a tour of the neighborhood that included an overview of what constitutes our regional arid lands architecture, the Sonoran adobe row house. Later on that day, my supervisor Helen of the University of Arizona’s Heritage Conservation department and I presented our NHL project to the board members of the Barrio Viejo Historic Preservation Advisory Panel. This was a great meeting, where even before we presented I gained an enhanced awareness of the review process that architects undergo in their advisory board proposals for their clients’ desired historic building alterations. The project as presented was well received and in fact one of its members, Bob Vint, an architect who works on Mission San Xavier del Bac, actually led our initial volunteer orientation Barrio tour.   Today I gave a workshop for our volunteers on the history of Tucson from the Spanish and Mexican eras into the Territorial days, Southwestern traditional and popular building trends, and presented a key to identifying architectural details and eras. I tried to convey the best I could the uniqueness of the barrio and how it stands as a last bastion of true Southwestern architecture for Arizona and Sonora, rather than Pueblo and Mission Revival styles. This morning we also had an interview with the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson’s main newspaper.  That, too, went really well and hopefully we can attract more volunteers to the project through the potential publicity gained through a newspaper article.