Month: January 2012

During our visit last Thursday to the Sun Yat-Sen Garden, we learned many things including the following:

Opened in 1986, the Sun Yat-Sen Garden is a non-profit organization that brings Chinese culture to Vancouver. The architectural design of the garden is based on  the Ming Dynasty. The garden has educational programs as well as events that enlighten visitors to the Chinese culture.

The features of the garden were all built within a year by 52 master craftsmen using only hand tools.  The halls and walkways were constructed without the use of nails, screws, or glue. Each and every window of the garden is handcrafted and unique. These windows are known as “leak windows” because they let light, air, and view through. The rocks in the garden are imported directly from China, and the plants seen are native to China.

Besides providing education programs and events, the garden can also be rented for corporate, social, or media events. Weddings at the garden have also been known to happen.

The first visit to the garden was made by members of the team on January 19th. Details of the visit including questions and answers for the client will be found in this post at a later time.

Our community service project (CSL) involves designing and building a signage box for the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Garden located in Vancouver BC. Our group consists of six Civil Engineering students from UBC in 2nd and 3rd year. For this project, a UBC hydrostatics graduate student is mentoring us throughout the process. A new entry will be posted every week summarizing our work and what we have learned from the experience.

The individual roles and contact information of the members of our group are as follows:

Andrei (Mentor Liason) –  achutskoff@itc-group.com
Matt (Client Liason) – matthewmy@gmail.com
Leo (Document Manager) – mynameis_leo_@hotmail.com
Kevin (Blogger) – kevinyangxp@gmail.com
Craig (Leader/Organizer) – santos.craig@gmail.com
Eric (Secretary) – ericyaleho@gmail.com
Ali (Mentor) – alipour1982@gmail.com

We look forward to working with our client and plan on conducting a site visit in the upcoming week. During this time, we will meet our client representative, Claudette Martin (Operations Manager), and will gain a better understanding of the organization and parameters of the design project. The answers and questions from the visit will be posted in our next blog entry.

You can chronicle your CSL team’s weekly accomplishments as you move toward the successful completion of your project.