NORTH HOLLYWOOD : Children Get Chance to Build for the Future

Out of the minds of babes. . .

The Fair Avenue Elementary School auditorium in North Hollywood became a bobbing sea of white hard hats Thursday as 50 students bent over their piles of plastic building blocks, string and aluminum foil with architectural musings swimming through their 11-year-old brains.

Sanyika Bryant carefully attached aluminum foil to a space station hospital. Edgar Alvarez constructed white Corinthian plastic columns that would mark the entrance to his museum. Tam Pham worked on the steps leading to a green and blue sphinx.

The sixth-graders’ construction projects were part of a contest sponsored by the National Assn. of Women in Construction’s Valley chapter and local construction companies. The contest was an attempt to interest grade schoolers in the construction industry.

“In the year 2000 there’s going to be a shortage of skilled construction workers,” said Cheryl Johnson, Valley chapter president.

When the contest was first held, many students built churches. This, the third year, showed a more topical theme.

Christina Hinojosa chose to build a bridge, complete with plastic boats with foil sails, because she remembered the images of the freeway bridges collapsed in the Northridge earthquake.

“I heard a little people got hurt in the bridge and I felt sorry for them,” said the second-place winner. “So I wanted to make a bridge that wouldn’t damage in an earthquake or hurricane.”

This year, the children built hospitals, clinics, and fire and police stations because, they said, those were the buildings most needed.

“I just thought of it because of the fires we’ve been having. So I thought we’d need a fire department,” said Adrianna Prado, as she showed her two-story fire station.

Her neighbor, Nancy Pothidang built a hospital “for the people in the house when the earthquake comes and the house collapses. So they’ll have a place to go.”

Janine Mejia’s earthquake-proof police station won first place with its satellite dish, emergency staircase and removable roof showing the different departments and floors.

Among the plastic and foil condominiums, playgrounds, pyramids and stores stood a rock-strewn apartment complex.

Jessica Cunningham, though she didn’t personally know anyone who lost a home during the earthquake, nevertheless wanted to remember those who did.

She built the collapsed housing complex “because of what happened to a lot of people. I felt really sorry for them.”