NICA Project (Estudio Teddy Cruz)

“One project, several years in the making, should start construction this year in the California border town of San Ysidro.”

Under the auspices of Casa Familiar, a nonprofit organization that serves immigrant communities, the development, which is intended as a pilot project, includes a community center on the site of an old church, and affordable rental housing and community gardens that are woven under, above and around a concrete arbor, parts of which can also be used for things like local markets. In another project, planned for a village outside Managua, Nicaragua, the community would become a construction company, and its revenue would be used to build housing. Projects like these allow Cruz to “focus on the issues of the local — to look in our backyards,” he said. “Every issue converges there.” From NYT Magazine , Jan. 2010

-C.S.