This was our last full week of work before presenting the project back to Global Mamas, and it was a busy one. With all the team back in Ghana, it was all hands on deck to produce attractive images of the design that would communicate the important features and show the design off to its best. We drew up the latest version of the site plan and developed the 3D model as far as we could in the time we had, concentrating especially on the sewing and batiking production spaces.

Last Saturday was the day of the presentation, and we held an event at the Global Mamas offices to mark the end of the summer architectural internship, and present all our work and the final conceptual design. There was a small but lively gathering of Global Mamas staff, volunteers and friends. We invited feedback and comments from the group and received some useful constructive criticism amid an overall positive response. We are very proud of the work we have done, and although there is a lot more still to be done to develop the design, I think we have produced a solid base from which the project can move to the next stage.

The next steps for ASF and Global Mamas will include drawing up a budget and detailed costing for the different elements of the design, starting to look around for suitable land for the site, and of course the all-important fundraising, without which the Fair Trade Zone will not be able to lift off the paper and into reality.

We had a challenging few weeks as a couple of members of the team had to temporarily depart to different continents. Interrupted Skype communications and expensive phone calls were the order of the day. Nevertheless we made headway with the design and spent a lot of time revising the master plan and testing different versions. We used local climate information, as well as narratives of the journeys that people and fabric will take through the site to inform the relationships

We started to build a 3D computer model of the site which we refined as the design became clearer. Glenn and Mae-Ling both architects working in Ghana came to the Global Mamas office to conduct design reviews with us, and these were very valuable in helping us to distill and focus the conceptual ideas behind the design.