October 12 is a religious holiday in Brazil, it celebrates Our Lady of Aparecida. It is also known as 'Children's Day' and the kids all over the country get community parties and, often, little gifts from their family.

AMCA1, our community partner neighborhood association, prepared a very special party for the children within the community and adjacency, with the collaboration of a few other private and public entities.

Children from 1 to 13 year old participated on races, played in the Santo Dias Park playground, received kits with toys and T's, food and drinks, not to mention a lot of sweets!

Take a look at our slide show for a peek of this special day in the community!

We are moving along with Design Development phase, and we have been fortunate to receive contribution from amazing people!

Just last week Daniel Feldman, former Design Fellow for Rio de Janeiro's 2010 Gamechangers project, visited us in Capao Redondo. Neide Santos and I showed him around the site and the fantastic Santo Dias Park nearby. Daniel provided us great comments over coffee, mainly on potential security issues and how to avoid them. He was really excited to visit us and finally get to see with his own eyes what we've been sharing over the internet!

Another great collaboration to our project recently was athlete Keila Costa's comments on how to build a long jump practicing area for beginners. We will be incorporating it to our site and Keila will eventually teach the community kids on this sport as ambassador for Projeto Vida Corrida.

Check out photos for both visits in our slide show!

We reviewed a 24 page document describing our work for the Schematic Phase. (Images 1 and 2) This document covers the following:

i. Site Analysis
ii. Construction – Recomendation for Systems and Materials
iii. Schematic Design – Location & Site Plans; Floor Plans; Sections;
Elevations; Perspective Views
iv. Preliminary Costs

We went through each drawing discussing phasing, design features and how materials would be used throughout the building.

A community session was organized to share our progress during the Schematic Phase. We shared it through colorful boards (see images on slide show) and collected a few suggestions/comments from visitors.

Neighborhood Association Reps Neide Santos, Clodoaldo Cajado and Joao Ferreira introduced to everyone the local associations that joined forces today to form CDC Nelson Nunes; Who was Nelson Nunes; and the community work that has been going on for many years. Local Architect Alan Borger introduced the overall design intent, keywords, and how this project could ripple into a wider community transformation.

Despite not being able to share with participants the group exercise, due to delay on presentations, we achieved our purpose to share our progress with the community. It gives them an opportunity to think about the project and participate even further in future meetings.

Yesterday we had a great team meeting where we reviewed the Design Brief Document - which describes the program and budget in more detail, and give us a few parameters (such as climate, planning & bldg. code analysis) to base Schematic Design on!

Everyone was thrilled to sign the document and discuss next steps, like the July 2nd meeting with the whole community! So much to do till then: drawings, writing, presentation boards, and so on. (see photo)

On June 5th Sao Paulo had a city wide event to celebrate World Environment Day! Within our neighborhood, there were workshops, debates and cultural presentations at the Santo Dias Park. Our team participated by sharing initial ideas of our project through a colorful board and collected quite a few suggestions/comments from visitors. (see images on slide show)

We explained to the community the many organizations and their respective roles within our project, talked about our goals towards a sustainable building, and the many activities and uses the spaces will allow for. A few of them offered to volunteer during construction and after inauguration through educational programs!

We achieved our purpose for this session, which was to show our participation within community events and give the community an opportunity to think about the project and participate even further in future meetings.

This week we met with Campo Limpo District Staff to talk about the approval process for the project. We also got a map with topography information. We have a 6 meter level difference between the north and south sides of the site. It's good news and bad news at the same time, depending how we look at it. We want to have the site fully accessible for disabled, so that will be a challenge to find ramp room. On the other hand, it may give us an opportunity on the design side.

The Architect of Record, Alan Borger, has the help of his team back at Fabrica de Projetos.(Project Factory) That's really exciting, as I love to have as many people chiming in ideas as possible. We set up a weekly meeting for design discussion on Wednesdays! We also started a discussion not only on building susteinability, but also on the financial sustainability of the project. We want our community partner to be aware of maintenance costs and be able to come up with ideas to sustain these and any other costs that will come up once we are done with construction.

Time is passing fairly quickly since I first arrived in Capao Redondo, on April 8th. The community received me with all care and attention! Our first meeting on site was April 11th, where the neighborhood association, volunteers, Nike do Brasil, City of Sao Paulo Sports Department, District of Campo Limpo Sports Department and, of course, Architecture for Humanity were represented!

Since then we've held a few meetings with the Community Partner group. We were able to finalize the Project Program last week. Neide Santos also showed me some neighboring organizations that are doing amazing work with kids and artists! (see photos) The Architect of Record is now on board and tomorrow we begin Schematic Design along with research of local materials and constructions methods!

I have been enjoying the exercise classes (Vida Corrida project) with Neide and the community. These classes are always so inspiring to me, not only physically, but professionally. To think that my work here is going to benefit each and everyone of these people! The class ended a bit earlier last Friday, as they had drinks and yummy food to celebrate mother's day. The sense of community and support for each other is always present! I love that!