I just got my alumni magazine from the University of Idaho.

When I was there, there was a lot of hopeful talk about getting a new architecture building.

(Honestly, I thought it would be quite a while before that happened. Besides, I liked the building we had. Brick, covered in ivy, with intuitive navigation and daylighting. But I digress.)

So what do I see in the alumni magazine?

The School of Architecture is indeed getting a new building.

And the students are going to help build it.

I don’t mean that they’re going to make 3D models of it in rhino, or do some stuff in AutoCAD. I mean they’re literally going to build it with their own hands.

And I am so so so jealous.

I can imagine the students on the job site, pouring the foundation, setting up the trusses, learning through experience what all the parts are, how they all fit together, what they do.

Unlike last semester’s Building Construction class I took here at the GSD where we copied line drawings out of books in order to fulfill the requirements of our assignments. I didn’t know what all those little black and white lines were, or what they meant. What they were for. Why they’re important. All I knew is that I only had a couple of hours to whip it out so that I could go back to trying to please my insatiable studio critic. In other words, I learned squat about building construction (except what I remember from my Materials & Methods class at the U of I.)

I miss you, Idaho. My heart is always there.