HARLINGEN — The dreams flew effortlessly onto the platforms, round wooden sections of balsa rising in an almost fluid motion.
“We were going for the way birds might lay their nests,” said Javier Sanchez, 18, a senior in Michelle Honl’s architecture design class.
He looked at the prototype of a tower for birdwatchers and added, “This would be organic, like nature.”
He was referring to the way the structure was intended to emulate nature.
Javier was among the architecture design students from both Harlingen High School and Harlingen High School South who recently presented their end-of-year school projects.
The students had visited the World Birding Center in Mission together for their project to design an observation tower.
The WBC, Honl said, was invited to see student proposals which would be critiqued. She emphasized, however, the WBC has not committed to using any of the designs nor did it ask for any proposals. These were simply end-of-year projects. WBC representatives were unable to attend.
Javier and fellow architecture student Zach Ramirez spoke to Honl and Cecilia Lamardo, a critiquer from Tampa, Florida, during their presentation Thursday. That presentation took place at Harlingen High School and included one of six end-of-year school projects by eight students.
“This project was inspired after I visited the World Birding Center in Mission and noticed they only had one tower for the amount of land and location,” Honl said. “I wanted the students to have an opportunity to design something that could make a difference in a real world environment.”
Lamardo was very impressed with the projects.
“This is not high school work,” said Lamardo, a Pharr-San Juan-Alamo native. She’s currently working as a real estate agent. She has a bachelor’s of environmental design and a bachelor’s of science in construction science.
“This is just really impressive to have this kind of professionalism here at the high school,” she said.
While she had good things to say about all the projects, they could always be better. She looked carefully over Javier’s and Zach’s projects.
“I feel like there’s something missing,” she said. “I don’t know what.”
Upon further consideration, she said, “It’s very austere. They’re just poles with round platforms on top.”
She and Honl both pointed out the need for ADA ramps and that’s exactly what the next project served up in a big way. Mauricio Echeverria and his partner Robert Elizondo produced an intriguing design that rose in a sort of zigzag pattern. Plastic birds painted silver sat at intervals.
“We want the birds to feel as if they were at home,” said Mauricio, 18, a senior.
“The station is ADA compliant so people with disabilities can also enjoy it,” he said. “It’s accessible even for people with wheelchairs. We really enjoyed it. It was hard but we enjoyed it.”
“I am proud of it,” added Robert, 18.
Lamardo offered some practical tips when it comes to creating such designs. One of those suggestions was to try more than the first design.
Taylor Cooley, 18, had drawn several designs, none of which felt right. Then one night a concept came to her in a dream, and the resulting design worked.
“My project is very simple,” she said. “I tried to incorporate the message of less is more. I wanted to show that form can follow function.”
The students all seemed to have turned ideas into physical forms, offering new and intriguing uses of positive space.
