Jessica Braun: Sustainable Architecture MA and Mongolian Care Center Designer
Nomadic family in their one room ger (light wood and felt structure)
While reading through the 2007-2008 Selected Profession Fellows final reports, my eyes were drawn to Jessica Braun’s report, in which she proposed a care center to serve disabled children and their families in southwestern Mongolia. This story interested me because, while in Brazil, in addition to teaching, I volunteered with City of Youth, an organization that gives Brazilian street kids homes, education, job training, and community support. Jessica’s project in sustainable architecture, which studied southwestern Mongolia and the culture to determine how to best serve the community, spoke to my belief in helping a community help itself.
Jessica first learned of the community’s need through a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia. The project evolved through a six-month e-mail series and culminated in a visit to the Bayankhongor region. When applying for the AAUW fellowship, Jessica knew she was interested in an extended travel architectural study, but she didn’t necessarily know where. She called the AAUW fellowship rarely rare opportunity for architecture students and said that it would have been unlikely for her to travel to Mongolia without the financial assistance of the fellowship.
This trip was essential to the project because, as Jessica explained, even with extensive research, a project is just hypothetical. “It is difficult to get a sense of the place. This was very clear in Mongolia; there is no way we could have come up with the final project we did without the visit.” The best part of the project, according to Jessica, was “trying to relate to the people and make the architecture serve them.”
Mongolian Family with their only means of transportation.
The final product of the project in Mongolia was a 30-page booklet of vignettes on impressions of the region, characteristics of the buildings, and the rationale behind certain elements of the structure. With the project Jessica and her colleague hoped to provide community members with a way to “reflect on their understanding of their own town.”
Currently the care center project is on hold awaiting funding. However, Jessica is moving forward in her career. She recently started with Stanley Architects, an Austin firm that specializes in sustainable architecture. While Jessica doesn’t have any immediate plans to leave Austin, she hopes to “include in her professional life the same type of international outreach that [she] did at school.” She would like to help underserved communities either locally or abroad.
As for me, I have been inspired by Jessica’s story and have begun the process of creating my own graduate studies major that reflects my background in writing, my interest in service work, and my love for the international community. Thanks to Jessica for her parting advice, “You need to make your own place. You can invent your own opportunities if you look hard enough. Don’t be stopped by the current system.”
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This is article #4 in the Following the Fellows Series.
