YAO JIN VILLAGE, China - Last week we were in Yao Jin with two construction experts from one of China’s largest property development companies.  An architect and engineer toured the village with us and immediately started to sketch rough plans for homes.

Kevin, the architect, is a graduate from China’s most prestigious architectural university and it was a pleasure to watch him at work. Within just a few minutes he had sketched out a site plan and house design that looked amazing. The team kindly offered to draw us up some blueprints using professional CAD computer programs. This type of service is very valuable, after all, these guys build some of the world’s most impressive skyscrapers.

In the afternoon we met with the vice chairman of the local township who is in charge of coordinating the whole reconstruction project for the area around Yao Jin. For us to make this a successful project, we need the full cooperation and support of the local government. He told us that all villages have been asked to submit a preliminary reconstruction plan by July 10th. This is basically to let the government know if villages intend to stay in their location and, if so, where they want to construct. The architectural team will allow us to go one step further, as we will not only have cleared Yao Jin of debris by July 10th but we’ll also have detailed plans for the type of house we want to build! The government official told us that any new home will have to withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake and our engineer, Alex, said “not a problem.”

We are taking Yao Jin light years ahead in terms of relief and reconstruction, however we’ll also be making the architectural plans available to the local government so that other villages can also use the model. At this point, the government has still not given official clearance for the reconstruction of permanent buildings, but that is expected on August 10th. This will mark 3 months since the quake, at which time the chances of any further aftershocks are anticipated to have subsided.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Asia, China Disaster, David Darg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.