![A man wearing glasses and a bow tie stands beside a scale model of a modern building, with large windows and a landscape visible in the background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Meem_Meem-400x225.jpg)
A Gift for Sketching Buildings
By Rachel Preston In the 1930s, the Great Depression had wiped out economies and careers. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal would offer up programs in craft, design, construction, and art that would eventually put more than half of New Mexico’s population—more than 200,000 people—back to work. One New Mexican architect would rise to the occasion, finding ways to empower communities across the state, right as he hit his stride in a career that would come to define mid-century New Mexico design.