Photo courtesy the deGuzmans Brian and Keri deGuzman with Solomon and Tesfanesh, who were adopted from Ethiopia

A Paradise Valley couple connects with an ASU architecture program to change the lives of Ethiopian orphans in the ultimate study abroad.

On New Year’s Eve in 2009, Phoenix architect Jack DeBartolo III took his wife and three children to an Old Town bicycle shop, where his life and countless others a continent away would be forever changed.

An avid cyclist, DeBartolo was shopping for some cold-weather gear at Bicycle Haus when he struck up a conversation with staffer Brock Boring. DeBartolo mentioned a trip he was taking to Liberia to design a vocational school in Monrovia. “You need to meet the deGuzmans,” Boring responded. “They’re here today.”

“We looked down,” DeBartolo recalls, “and saw these two beautiful children running around our feet.”

They were Jesmina (now 4) and Musse (now 3), two Ethiopian-born children adopted by Paradise Valley cardiothoracic surgeon Brian deGuzman and his wife, Keri. The deGuzmans were planning a trip back to Ethiopia to adopt two more children and check on some community projects they support there that help some of the country’s 5 million orphaned children.

It was a serendipitous encounter. At the time, DeBartolo was looking for a project for students in the graduate-level traveling studio he would teach that fall at Arizona State University’s design school.

Village of Soddo

“I have a huge passion for excellence in design and doing really innovative things in architecture,” he says. “But at the same time there was a part of me wondering, ‘Is that it?’ It seemed really empty, too self-referential. With all that I’ve been given and all the opportunities I’ve had, it seemed that I should be giving more.” The Liberia experience was catalytic. “Could I somehow teach, let the students do the majority of the work and spark in them a passion to do this kind of [humanitarian] work?”

After ASU officials rejected his proposal to design a chapel along the Nile River honoring the Lost Boys of Sudan, DeBartolo’s wife, Tricia, urged him to contact the deGuzmans. They were seeking an architect for Wolaitta Village, which will serve about 250 children in Soddo, a village in the mountainous central region of Ethiopia. It was the start of EthiopiaStudio, DeBartolo’s gutsy, no-frills architectural studio for ASU design students.

Unlike most design schools, where the studio work is highly individualized, DeBartolo runs his studio like a professional design firm, with students working as a collaborative team. His pitch to students didn’t sugarcoat the experience.

“I’m going to take you to one of the poorest places in the world,” he recalls telling them. “I’m going to need you to be humble, not complain, be willing to sacrifice and be uncomfortable. You’re going to have to get several shots, and I hope you all come back healthy. But the upside is, our project is going to get built.”

Last September, 11 students spent a week with DeBartolo in Soddo, tromping in knee-high boots through muddy fields, meeting local craftsmen and the director of the orphanage.

Their concept featured a food-production center, garden, community center, well, and other amenities to make the village self-sustainable. It incorporated local building materials and labor in a culturally respectful design. The deGuzmans are providing or raising the majority of the funding for the project.

In August, DeBartolo will select a new team of students for a new project. In early September, they will travel to a poor village 118 miles outside of the capital city of Addis Ababa to draw up plans for 20 classroom buildings the local community will build.