purpose in architecture

My interest in architecture was sparked in the 7th grade when I was assigned a "dream house" project for my math class. The assignment was to create your own dream house and calculate the cost of the materials and construction of the project as a whole. Although this was the genesis of my interest in architecture, is not the reason why I want to become an architect.

All my life, I have grown up in the "ghetto" (or the projects), and have been struggling to help my family and I get out the situation that we are in. Since I lost my father at age five, my mother has been struggling to take care of me and my other two siblings. Due to the lack of american education, my mom can only limit herself to working as a full time seamstress. This resulted in having to live in areas that have cheaper rent due to the market value.

As I was growing up, I attended public schools that had a high drop out rate. The schools were also in areas that had a high crime rate also. Many students in my neighborhood and my classmates from school tended to stray away from academics and found themselves participating in activities that were self-destructive or illegal.

Despite of my surroundings, I was able to stay away from the peer pressure and focus on eduacation and participate in positive activities so that I could be able to attend a university and make something of myself.

As I reached my senior year in high school, I participated in a program called A.C.E. Mentor where I was introduced to a firm named Chong & Partners. I grew very fond of this firm because of their work was not focused on commercialized projects but on community based projects. This really interested me because I have always believed that there are not enough places to have schools, outreach programs, recreational centers, or community based centers. I found that Chong & Partners worked on projects such as the Academy of Science, the I-Hotel, and some other projects that in many ways impacted the community.

I feel that architects really shape and mold the society through their designs and ideas. And this is really important to me because I grew up in a really bad area where there weren't too many centers for the youth or programs for the youth to participate in and the crime rate was extremely high. In an ideal world, I would like to see my peers from my neighborhood succeed and do well in life and I feel that one thing that may help is the molding of the quality of the neighborhoods.

However little or big a difference I can make, if and when I make it as an architect, I know that my goal is to try to make some affect on the poorer communities here in San Francisco.