Project365: Day 25 - Mentorship

Day 25 - Mentorship, originally uploaded by Tim Bungert.

This is my second year volunteering with the ACE Mentor Program. This year I am the leader of a team of 29 high school students and 9 mentors. Each year we break the team into a Design group, Engineering Group, and Construction group. The three groups work with mentors who are professionals in their field and in collaboration with the other groups to create a design for a theoretical building. It's like doing a very large-group architecture school studio project with the collaborative help of engineers, construction managers, and construction tradesmen during the design process.

This year's project challenge is to design a local novelty T-Shirt store (think Raygun), event space, and cafe in an old brick dairy barn located in the East Village neighborhood of Des Moines. Using an existing building for a new use has presented these students with challenges that make them think critically and creatively as they solve the problems as a group.

Mentoring for ACE has been incredibly rewarding for me. It is always fun to see a new generation of future architects, engineers, and contractors get excited about creating a better community through design.

For more info on the ACE program nationally, go to www.acementor.org