Península de Cantera - San Juan, Puerto Rico 2019

MIT School of Architecture and Planning

with: Luisel Zayas and Pedro Sifre design team: Cristina Solis, Gabrielle Heffernan, Cheyenne Vandevoorde, Carlos Casalduc, Marisa Waddle, Jonathon Brearley, and Wei Xun He

A year and a half after hurricane Maria, it was estimated that over 25,000 homes still remained braced under blue tarps, and that the forced migration had exceeded 100,000. Clearly, there was a lot left to do. After holding a first workshop in 2018, the “Techos” initiative returned to hurricane stricken sites to challenge the role of architectural design in addressing the daunting need for shelter.

Through this workshop, students participated in constructing three prototype timber roofs in San Juan, Puerto Rico within a host community, learning from builders and engineers, while also interrogating and expanding on this particular strategy of adaptive design for relief in its own timing and context.

By discussing a host of other responses to the post-hurricane housing and infrastructure problem and collaborating with disaster management entities, this workshop aims to reflect on what has been done, what scales of intervention have been proposed, and how we could envision to move forward. Fundamentally, “Techos” speculates that delving into these complex processes of intervention is of benefit for both academia and practice, and that it is only through hands-on execution and prototyping that one can begin to understand the problems that we as designers aim to solve.

Developing the design from our first workshop, the project goal for Techos 2019 was to complete a wood and metal sheeting roof for the existing single-story homes of three families that had been denied aid to repair damages caused by hurricanes Irma and María. The houses were located in Península de Cantera, in San Juan. The roofs, built in three weeks, were also equipped with rainwater collection systems.

The team was composed of graduate and undergraduate students. This team was supported on site by four experienced builders.

The project took place during my tenure as Teaching Fellow in the School of Architecture and Planning, in collaboration with Luisel Zayas. It was sponsored either directly or in-kind by MIT, several architecture firms, and foundations involved in the post-disaster recovery of the Island. Many of partnerships created during the making of this initiative are still in place today, with the aim of supporting the resilient reconstruction of Puerto Rico.